
Pass Jja y 
Book JJ3 



S9? 



By S. D. McCONNELL, D.D. 



HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN EPISCOPAL 
CHURCH. Seventh Edition, Enlarged. 8vo, 
Cloth . . $2.00 

A YEAR'S SERMONS. i 2 mo, Cloth . . 1.25 

SONS OF GOD. A Series of Sermons. 12100, 

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THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher 

2 and 3 Bible House, New York 



HISTORY 



AMERICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH 



1L BY 

S. D. McCONNELL, D. D., D. C. L. 

RECTOR OF HOLY TRINITY CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



SEVENTH EDITION 
REVISED AND ENLARGED 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 and 3 Bible House 
1897 




*)S1 If LL O TW0 cm ?$ RECEIVED 






6168 



Copyright, 1890, by Thomas Whittaker 
Copyright, 1897, by Thomas Whittaker 




's- 

\ 






TO MY BOYS 
ELLICOTT, GUTHRIE, CHRYSTIE 



" Superficial it must be, but I do not disown the charge. Better 
a superficial book which brings well and strikingly together the 
known and acknowledged facts, than a dull, boring narrative, pausing 
at every moment to see farther into a millstone than the nature of 
the millstone will admit." 

—Sir Walter Scott, Journal, Dec. 22, 1825. 



PKEFACE TO ENLARGED EDITION. 



In preparing this sketch of the American Church 
originally, I stopped at the close of the Civil War. Of 
course that was an arbitrary stopping place. The 
war was not an ecclesiastical epoch, and its settlement 
concluded no Church movement. But its date coin- 
cided with that of the entrance upon the stage of the 
generation of Churchmen now living. I shrank from 
the frank expression of opinion of contemporary men 
and events which I had ventured concerning those 
the record of whose influence had been made up. 

Furthermore, the most difficult of all history to 
write is contemporaneous history. One cannot tell 
surely what events are important and what are trivial. 
Time, and time alone, sorts them out and assigns to 
each its proper significance. 

Nevertheless, it now seems well, or at any rate 
necessary, to briefly sketch the Church's movement 
during the last quarter century. No doubt I have 
omitted as unimportant, men and things which others 
would have dwelt upon, and have laid emphasis upon 
events which others would have disregarded. All that 
one can say is that this is the way the history appears 
to me. If it appears otherwise to another, he has the 
right to record it in his fashion. 

S. D. McConnell. 

Advent, 1897 



CONTENTS. 



PART FIRST. 

THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE STAGE 5 

The Indians; ownership of the soil; occasion of the 
immigration ; the Spanish Peace; the Act of Uniformity ; 
its effect to destroy the national quality of the Church. 

II. THE VIRGINIANS 14 

Raleigh's Colony; Gorges' Colony; the Virginia Com- 
pany; the first Church; English interest in Colonial 
ventures; Indian Missions; Pocahontas; first represent- 
ative Assembly ; laws concerning Religion ; spirit of the 
laws ; relaxation of manners. 

III. THE PURITANS 26 

Religious parties in England ; not unequal division ; 
the Churchmen's theory; the "Pilgrims"; the Salem 
Colony; Puritan theory and practice; the Puritan tem- 
per; the Puritan laws; planting the Church; John 
Morton; the Brown brothers; the Rev. William Blax- 
ton; Churchmen in Massachusetts; withdrawal of the 
Charter ; the Church and the Government ; parish or- 
ganized in Boston; Governor Andros; the Old South; 
King's Chapel; the quarrel ended. 

IV. THE ROMAN CATHOLICS 48 

Lord Baltimore; the Maryland Colony; Romanists 
and religious liberty ; persecution by them impossible ; 
slow growth of the colony; "bad Catholics"; revoca- 
tion of the Charter; unworthy Clergy; the situation in 
1770. 

V. THE DUTCH 59 

Seeking the East Indies; ecclesiastical position of the 
Dutch ; the Dutch as settlers ; religious toleration ; com- 
ing of the English ; Church establishment; plan for the 
Episcopate ; Trinity Church. 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. THE SOUTH RIVER 69 

The Swedes ; their absorption by the English ; George 
Fox; Quakerism; extravagance and repression; persecu- 
tion; Quakers in New Jersey; William Penn; Penn's 
Colony; Quakers coming to the Church; George Keith; 
first Pennsylvania Church; increase and spread. 

VII. THE CAROLINAS 82 

Indians and "Welsh; the "noble" Colony; religious 
condition ; Church establishment. 

VIII. A GENERAL SURVEY 86 

The year 1700; Services; use of the Prayer Book; 
social status of the Clergy; Clerical manners; effect of 
Puritanism upon the Ministerial office ; conflict with the 
Vestries; effect of government support; the Church in 
New England; in the Middle Colonies. 

IX. THE ''VENERABLE SOCIETY" 96 

Dr. Bray ; his report upon the Church in the Colonies ; 
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
Parts; instructions to Missionaries; Keith and Talbot; 
conciliating Dissenters; building churches; work of the 
Missionaries. 

X. THE COMMISSARIES: MARYLAND . . . .105 
Dr. Bray; the Maryland establishment; attempt to 
reform manners; the Clergy vs. the people; hostile legis- 
lation ; growth of other churches. 

XL THE COMMISSARIES: VIRGINIA 112 

William and Mary College ; opposition to the College ; 
the College and the Church; decline of discipline; at- 
tempt at reform ; devoted men in the Church ; growing 
spirit of Americanism; the " Parsons' Cause " ; Patrick 
Henry ; the results. 

XII. THE NEW ENGLAND CONVERTS . . . .127 
President Cutler; the question of Orders; the attrac- 
tion of the Church ; President and Professors of Yale 
enter the Church; Puritan opposition; accessions; Dean 
Berkeley. 

XIII. THE "GREAT AWAKENING" 136 

Jonathan Edwards; the "Revival" at Northampton; 
Edwards's theory of "conversion"; "bodily exer- 
cises"; spread of the movement; the "jerks"; meets 
Whitefield ; attitude of Churchmen ; the reaction ; effect 
upon American religion; the Church's position; how 
affected by the movement. 



CONTENTS, xi 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV. THE GERMANS 147 

First German immigration; the "Pennsylvania 
Dutch"; religious character and condition; the Mora- 
vians ; their influence on Whitefield; intractable material 
for the Church. 

XV. THE SCOTCH-IRISH 153 

England and Scotland at the Reformation ; Calvinism 
and Presbyterianisin ; Presbytery and Episcopacy ; 
Episcopal rigor ; emigration to Ireland; emigration to the 
United States ; hostility to the Church ; a cordon around 
her; influence upon the Church. 

XVI. THE METHODISTS 160 

The first American sect ; its origin ; Methodists the 
first "Ritualists"; the Wesleys in Georgia; Wesley as a 
parish priest; Wesley and the Moravians; Wesley's 
" conversion "; desperate state of Religion in England ; 
the Methodist purpose; Whitefield the preacher and 
Wesley the organizer; Methodism comes to America; 
still within the Church ; the Methodist " Bishops "; the 
loss by separation. 

XVII. THE EPISCOPATE 173 

Two theories of the Church; disadvantage of the 
Church's theory in the Colonies ; Ordination and Dis- 
cipline ; early efforts for the Episcopate ; the need of it 
patent; great opportunities lost; the " S. P. G.'s" plan; 
the Pennsylvania plan; reasons of the failure; current 
conception of the Episcopal office ; Colonial opposition; 
early thought of separation ; legal status of the Colonies ; 
opposition not unreasonable; John Adams's opinion; 
not possible till after the Revolution ; idea of an " Inde- 
pendent Episcopal Church"; Dr. White's plan; the 
popular judgment. 

XVIII. A SURVEY 190 

Spread of the Church in Connecticut ; in New York ; 
in New Jersey and Pennsylvania ; in the South ; Indian 
Missions; sources of gain; lack of Clergy; state of Re- 
ligion ; influence of Franklin ; coarseness of the age ; 
social distinctions; Services; Architecture; Confirma- 
tion ; Clerical support. 

XIX. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE . . . .202 

The inevitable conflict; equal division of parties; ex- 
odus of Tories; lay Churchmen's position ; position of the 
Clergy; "patriot" Clergy; "loyalist" Clergy; sufferings 
of the Clergy; desolation of the Church. 



xil CONTENTS. 



PART SECOND. 

THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE 
UNITED STATES. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. GATHERING UP THE FRAGMENTS . . . .215 
The confusion ; treatment of the Tories ; popular opinion 
about the Church ; three motives in reorganization ; the 
Southern attempt; the Church named; organization in 
Maryland and Virginia; relation of Church and State 
settled. 

II. THE NEW ENGLAND PLAN 223 

New England Churchmanship ; distrust of loose views ; 
first Connecticut Convention ; political obstacles ; choosing 
a Bishop; the programme; the sentiment in England; 
English Bishops' reluctance ; the Scotch and New England 
Churches; the Nonjurors; the first Bishop. 

III. THE FEDERAL IDEA 238 

Colonial school of statesmanship; Rev. Dr. White; the 
Conference at New Brunswick ; fundamental principles ; 
Constitutional Convention; two proposed policies; State 
and Church Constitutions; laymen in Church Councils; 
revising the Prayer Book; the " Proposed Book"; Fourth 
of July Service; anti-dogmatic spirit; Unitarianism ; the 
Episcopate; Address to the English Bishops; the Bishops' 
reply ; Bishops chosen. 

IV. THE TWO EPISCOPACIES 254 

Two Episcopal Churches; obstacles to union; plans to 
perpetuate the separation ; striving for union; Dr. Parker's 
scheme ; Convention of 1789 ; Bishop White and the Eng- 
lish succession; adjusting difficulties; Bishop Seabury's 
Toryism; adopting a Liturgy: modifying the Constitution; 
consolidation. 

V. STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT 264 

The experiment revolutionary ; government by Conven- 
tion; relation of the three orders; powers of a Bishop; 
right of Visitation ; encroachment of Standing Committee ; 
powers of the House of Bishops increased ; discipline of 
the Laity; control of the Liturgy; Uniformity; Hymns; 
power of General Convention ; State autonomy ; its gradual 
abandonment; The Thirty-nine Articles; their origin; 
their obligation. 



CONTENTS. Xili 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW 277 

Old men and new times; a dark epoch; French infi- 
delity; position of the Church; Confirmation; slack ad- 
ministration; troubles in New York; election of Hobart; 
the question of wigs; condition in the South; low estate in 
Virginia; Meade ordained; situation in New England; 
Bishop Seabury's manner ; Dr. Coke's proposition ; Metho- 
dists gone beyond recall; dawning of better days ; new men 
at work ; representative men; beginning of Sunday-schools ; 
state of the Church in 1820. 

VII. WAITING FOR VOLUNTEERS 297 

The national Church passive; pioneer Churchmen ; re- 
ligion in the backwoods; first thought of Missions; two 
streams of emigration; Bishop Chase; in New Orleans; 
pioneer missionary in Ohio; the frontier Bishop; Kenyon 
College; the Church in Kentucky; Bishop Otey; the 
Church in Tennessee ; new departure in 1835. 

VIII. NEW SPIRITUAL FORCES 311 

Meagre spiritual life ; the Evangelicals ; their differen- 
tiate ; conscious experiences ; Simeon's Confessions; their 
conception of the Church; Low Churchmen ; their achieve- 
ments ; cause of their decline ; Thomas Scott ; their leaders 
in America; High Church revival; the two parties; divis- 
ion of labor; advance of Churchmanship ; following the 
emigration; two Ideals. 

IX. THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE 324 

Emergence of Church Idea; trial of Bishops; agencies 
at work ; increasing activity; change of manners; corporate 
religion; the "Oxford Movement"; the "Tractarians"; 
the Via Media; Newman's purpose; the Via Media in 
America; American Churchmen ; Anglo-Catholics; a time 
of strife; perverts and converts; good and evil of the 
Movement. 

X. A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET . . .342 

Falling behind the population; a Church or a Sect; the 
Memorial; emancipation of the Episcopate; loosening of 
Rubrics; revival of the Diaconate; Church Unity; divers 
opinions; a true bill found; a fatal choice; spirit of Gen- 
eral Convention ; progress in a narrow path ; the Church in 
California ; the Church in Oregon ; muttering of coming 
war. 



1 



XIV CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XL IN WAR TIME 360 

Division of Churches upon the question of Slavery ; 
political division furthered thereby; Episcopal Church not 
divided ; general sentiment in the Church ; the Church 
faulted ; mutual understanding ; Southern Bishops oppose 
secession ; Southern idea of the Church and the States ; 
Secession ; the Church and the Union ; the Church in the 
Confederacy ; conflict with Federal authorities ; General 
Butler as a Canonist ; fall of the Confederate Church, 

XII. THE REUNITED CHURCH 374 

Moving toward union ; obstacles in the way ; Arkansas; 
Bishop Wilmer ; Bishop Polk ; General Convention of 
1865; reunion imperilled; Mr. Horace Binney's resolu- 
tion ; Dr. Kerfoot's plea ; reunion ; disbandment of the 
Confederate Church ; religious effects of the war ; new 
forces and new problems ; task of the present generation. 

XIII. DOCTRINE AND CEREMONIAL 382 

The worth of ritual ; the Church idea ; civic ritual ; the 
ritualists' contention ; Bishop Hopkins's book; the Bishops' 
Declaration ; the Ritual Commission ; things forbidden ; 
Dr. De Koven's challenge ; the Church's comprehensive- 
ness ; the end of controversy. 

XIV. PEACE WITH HONOR 395 

Evangelical perplexity ; Bishops' declaration on regen- 
eration ; the idea of secession; "Reformed Episco- 
palians." 

XV. PRAYER-BOOK REVISION 402 

" The Prayer-Book as it is ; " separation of offices; the 
science of liturgies ; revision begun ; the Book Annexed. 

XVI. THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP . . .410 

Looking to the East ; Italian reform ; Mexico ; contra- 
dictory reports from Mexico ; Mexican commission ap- 
pointed ; consecration of Bishop Riley ; the Church unity 
movement ; the Quadrilateral. 

XVII. THE NET RESULT 428 



INTRODUCTION. 



For many years I had it in my mind to attempt a 
History of American Christianity. It has been fre- 
quently noticed that the Christianity of America 
possesses characteristics of its own. It is not only 
different in many regards from that which subsisted 
in Europe at the time of the settlement of the colonies ; 
but it is different from that which subsists in any other 
portion of Christendom now. Christianity here wears 
a garment of American weaving and American adorn- 
ment. The religious history of the country is quite as 
striking as its political ; it has had as many and as 
marked epochs ; the influences which have shaped it 
have to be sought for in more numerous and more 
diverse sources ; and those influences are more actively 
at work now than are those which produce political 
changes. 

With this fact in view I thought to trace the stream 
of religious life in the United States to its many and 
various sources, to estimate the relative size and im- 
portance of the affluents which have colored it, and 
maybe to forecast its future course. 

I found the project to be so difficult that I abandoned 
it. Contemporary history is the least valuable of all 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

kinds. The relative importance of events and persons 
cannot be fairly estimated till time has tested them and 
shown which is great and which is small. The coher- 
ence of the facts in the religious history of our land 
cannot yet be seen. The facts themselves are abundant 
to embarrassment ; but they cannot yet be strung upon 
any single thread which I have been able to discover. 
In the political history of the country the unifying fact 
is the gradual coalescence of a number of independent 
and rival political organizations into one great whole, 
bound together by their common interest in a constitu- 
tionally regulated liberty. 

But alas ! the ecclesiastical history of the . United 
States has lagged a whole century behind its political. 
Free and independent churches are coincident in date 
with free and independent colonies. In the State the 
movement toward unity set in a hundred years ago ; in 
the Church it is only beginning to show itself. The 
Church has been content for most of this time with 
Mexican anarchy. It had been excused or justified by 
precisely the same arguments which were used in the 
colonies against the adoption of the federal Constitu- 
tion: "Liberty is best secured hj allowing each to 
work in its own way ; the danger of attack from with- 
out is so remote and unlikely that it need not be con- 
sidered ; the original charters of each are inalienable ; 
the weak ones will be swallowed up by the strong; 
mutual jealousies and ancient grudges are too strong 
and deep-rooted to be overcome ; no principle of federa- 



INTRODUCTION. xvil 

tion can be proposed which can ever be adopted ; the 
different colonies can best dwell together as brethren 
by not coming into too close relations." 

While this condition of things remains there cannot 
be written a history of the American Church. That 
will not be possible until there shall be an American 
Church. That time will surely come, — - when, no man 
may say. 

I have undertaken therefore the more modest task to 
set out the history of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the United States. Its life is continuous from the 
beginning. It was first on the ground. It is of inter- 
est to all Churchmen, and, for reasons which I hope to 
make evident, ought to be to all Americans. I shall 
speak of it habitually as " the Church " — not as arro- 
gating for it an exclusive right to that title, but because 
its legal name is uncouth and clumsy. I shall try to 
tell the story of what it has accomplished, and to speak 
candidly of its excellences and its faults. A history 
should above all things else be true. Glozing of faults 
and apologizing for wrong deeds is not the part of an 
honest friend or of an honest man. The Church can 
afford to have the truth told even about herself. He 
who finds it in his way to do this may not be accused 
of uncovering his mother's nakedness. 

But in the telling of the story large space will be 
occupied in examining the religious character and 
habits of those among and upon whom the Church has 
wrought. She has done great things for them, whereof 



xviii INTRODUCTION. 

they are not ashamed to say they are glad, but they 
have also done much for her. The Episcopal Church 
has been far more profoundly modified by her environ- 
ment here than her members realize. Some of her 
most cherished possessions have come to her from with- 
out. In many cases she has never known, or has long 
since forgotten, the name of the giver, but still holds 
and values the gift. It will be our task to notice the 
reciprocal influence of this Church upon the communi- 
ties where she has lived, and of those peoples upon her. 
We will see that she has thriven among Puritans and 
Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians, Dutch, Germans, 
and Irish ; has taught them all something, and learned 
something from them all. 



PART I. 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN THE COLONIES. 



HISTORY OF THE 
AMERICAN EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



PART I. 
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE STAGE. 



We will take for the starting-point the year 1600. 
We will notice in their order the Stage, the Actors, and 
the Drama. 

The stage upon which the action begins is the Atlan- 
tic seaboard, from the Kennebec on the north to the 
Savannah on the south, and extending backward roughly 
to the Mississippi. To the north and northwest the 
French are in possession. Seventy years before this time 
Cartier had sailed up the St. Lawrence, and anchored 
his shallop off the Heights of Abraham. Champlain 
and his little band of hardy adventurers are " seeking 
the skins of beasts and the souls of men " on the banks 
of the great lakes. That picturesque movement of 
French exploration and Jesuit missionary zeal had 
already set in which carried Marquette to the Illinois, 
Hennepin to the Falls of St. Anthony, and La Salle to 
the Brazos. Unfortunate Acadie was in its infancy. 



6 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

Le Caron, the Franciscan monk, and the Jesuits Jogues, 
Brebceuf, and Gamier were getting ready for that 
career which was to end in martyrdom among the 
Hurons and Iroquois. 

On the south and southwest the Spaniards held the 
soil. Forts and churches were on the St, John's and the 
Gulf, and a bishop with his priests on the Rio Grande. 

But from Maine to Georgia no white man dwelt. It 
was a virgin field upon which to work out the problems 
in religion, politics, and social life, which were perplex- 
ing England. The country was not without inhabit- 
ants. It was held by the only race of savages who 
have ever been able to make a stand against 

The Indians. . „..,.. ° 

the advancing army ot civilization. Inese 

withstood it, fought it off, broke themselves against it, 
dammed it back in one locality, only to find it flowing 
in behind them in another, until they perished in their 
tracks, or became encysted within set limits among the 
new people. How many Indians there were three cent- 
uries ago, it is not possible now to know. The consen- 
sus of scientific guesswork sets the number at about 
one million, within the present territory of the United 
States. They were divided roughly into three great 
groups or clusters. 

(1) The Algonkins, who have left their crabbed 
polys}dlables in the names of New England lakes and 
rivers. (2) A subdivision of the same great family, 
of a more euphonious speech and a fiercer savagery, 
whose seat was between the Hudson and the Susque- 
hanna, and stretching westward indefinitely to and 
beyond the Mississippi. (3) The Appalachians, dwell- 



THE STAGE. 7 

ing south of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi. In 
their manners they ranged from absolute savagery in 
the north to semi-barbarism in the south. 1 The con- 
version of these people to Christianity was the first, or, 
at any rate, the first-named motive for the coming of 
all the colonies. We shall have to notice again and 
again the efforts made to carry out this purpose. We 
will find it to be a record of failures. We will discover 
also a strange uniformity of feature in the successive 
failures. In every case the intelligence, apparent self- 
restraint, dignity, and gravity of the Indian led the 
missionaries to forecast great successes. The first essay 
always seemed to justify great hopes. The Indian lis- 
tened, argued, seemed to be concerned, gave his children 
to be taught, and led the missionary to report the proba- 
ble conversion of his whole tribe. But always, just 
when the project seemed most hopeful, an indiscrimi- 
nate massacre of missionaries and converts together 
swept the enterprise out of existence. The experience 
of all was the same. 2 Jesuit, Churchman, Puritan, 
Moravian, and Presbyterian missions all had the same 
issue. Their light was put out in blood on the Mo- 
hawk, the James, the Connecticut, and the Wabash. 
The " great massacre " is the last chapter in the history 
of the Indian mission in early days. They were irre- 
claimable as panthers. With intellectual endowment 
far beyond that of any other savage race, they were 
marked by the two qualities of treachery and cruelty 
to an indescribable degree. To love his enemy and to 
speak the truth seems to have been to the Indian con- 

1 Parkman : Discovery of the Great West, p. 275. 
* Ibid., p. 26. 



8 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

genitally impossible. In any case, this was true until 
they became reduced to helplessness two centuries and 
a half later, by being surrounded and disarmed. This 
fierce and hateful people roamed over the land in which 
a Christian church and nation was to grow. They had 
Ownership of no ownership in it, in the way we understand 
the soil. the term. The tribes lived far apart. Each 
had for its own hunting-grounds the territory from 
which it was not barred by its rivals. Each looked 
with jealousy upon all interlopers, but each was prompt 
to act as an interloper when occasion offered. Every 
good hunting-ground was claimed by many tribes. It 
was rare indeed that any tribe had an uncontested title 
to a tract of land, and where such a title did exist it 
rested, not on an actual occupancy and cultivation, but 
on the recent butchery of weaker rivals. 1 It is within 
the truth to say that the only title of any value either in 
law or morals which Indians have ever possessed is that 
given them by the people whom they fought for centuries, 
to the Reservations where the remnant of them now live. 
From whence will come settlers hardy enough to 
occupy this richly furnished, but savage and perilous 
stage? To answer this we must cross the ocean and see 
the colonists in their old homes. 

Within ten years of 1600 two events occurred in 
England which set in motion the emigration to America. 

They were : (1) The treaty of peace with 
the emigra- Spain. 2 (2) The revived enforcement of the 

Acts of " Uniformity " and " Supremacy." 
The way they operated was as follows : — 

1 Roosevelt: Winning of the West, vol. i. p. 88. 

2 The Peace was concluded Aug. 18, 1604. 



THE STAGE. 9 

For three generations England had been at war by 
sea and by land. The need of the belligerent times 
had created a class of men whose trade was warfare. 
" Sea dogs," like Frobisher, Drake, Hawkins, and 
Hudson with their hardy crews, holding letters of 
marque from the Protestant Princes of Europe, or com- 
missions from the Crown, had learned sailing and fight- 
ing as a craft. Soldiers of fortune like Raleigh, Smith, 
and Standish had carried their swords to market in 
every Protestant State in Europe. Each captain with 
his ship and crew, each swash-buckler with his band of 
musketeers at his heels, made his own bargain, or hired 
out his ship and guns to serve in any quarrel which his 
somewhat tough conscience would allow him to espouse. 
They were soldiers by profession and training, one 
might almost say by birth. They had swept around 
the British Isles chasing the Armada, and had fought 
against the Spaniard in the Low Countries, and against 
the Turk on the plains of Hungary. Now, the un- 
wonted experience of a peace with their hereditary foe 
left them without employment. With their crews and 
their companies they were thrown upon the world to 
earn a livelihood. There was no place for them in 
England. The England of 1600 was not the mighty 
empire of industry and commerce that it is to-day. 
London was a town smaller in size and with less than 
half the wealth of Denver or Hartford. Bristol and 
Plymouth, the places next in importance, were such as 
Norwich, Conn., or Norfolk, Va., are to-day. There 
was but little commerce ; manufactures were of the 
rudest, and agriculture the most primitive. Wolves 



10 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

were still dangerous within a day's ride on horseback 
of London. Swamps and fens held the places where 
cities now stand. Wild cattle were still found in the 
north. The farmer lived in a wattled and clay-covered 
house. The country was too small and too poor to 
absorb and provide for the multitude of soldiers and 
sailors out of occupation through the unwonted peace. 
The sea-dog therefore became an explorer, and the sol- 
dier of fortune was ready to guard the peaceful colonist. 
The revival of the " Act of Uniformity " at the 
same juncture made England an uncomfortable place 
ActofUni- f° r nearly one-half of her population. The 
formity. j^ c ^ provided that every congregation of 

Christian people, in its public worship, must use the 
Book of Common Prayer according to its rubrics. The 
Prayer-Book was distasteful to a large proportion of 
the people, for various reasons. A few opposed it 
on principle as being Romish. To their minds the 
Reformation in England had stopped midway to comple- 
tion. They thought they saw in the authorities, civil 
and ecclesiastic, a disposition to bring in again the evils 
of papal times. They had for their ideal the church in 
Geneva and Frankfort as fashioned by Calvin and 
Farel. The Prayer-Book imposed upon them by law 
— a law enforced by fire, stocks, jail, and banishment — ■ 
seemed to them to be in its very words and structure a 
league with death and a covenant with hell. Their ob- 
jection was not only an abstract one against the attempt 
to enforce uniformity in worship, but also against the 
Prayer-Book which was imposed. They believed its 
doctrine to be dangerous to souls. This class was not 



THE STAGE. 11 

large, but was active, learned, and filled with a sullen 
determination. But there was a far larger class who 
were led by prejudice and by customary usage to the 
same stand. The Act seemed to them to be, as indeed 
it was, a taking away of the hereditary right of Eng- 
lishmen. 1 Uniformity of worship had never been 
known in England. A variety of uses, as York, 
Sarum, Bangor, and Hereford, had prevailed unques- 
tioned up to within less than half a century of this 
time. In the early part of Elizabeth's reign there had 
been little change in the manner of public worship, of 
the sort which would strike the eye of the common 
worshipper. But for nearly a generation great confu- 
sion had existed. In some parishes the service was 
not distinguishable from the Roman mass, and in others 
from a Presbyterian meeting. In one parish the Holy 
Table was set up against the east wall altarwise, and in 
another set out " like an oyster board " in the aisle. In 
one parish a celibate priest officiated in cope and chasu- 
ble, while in the next a married priest held forth in his 
coat, while his wife wore the embroidered vestments 
for a petticoat. This state of things became intolera- 
ble to the authorities of the Church. They essayed to 
cure it by violence, and failed. But they did more 
than fail. By the attempt they destroyed the Church 
Effect to of England as a National Church. For a 
break up the thousand years before that time the Church 

National J 

Church. and the Nation had been one. From that 

time forward the Church of England ceased to be the 
Church of the English-speaking people. The confusion 

1 Anderson : History of the English Church in the Colonies, vol. i. p. 99. 



12 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

which was attempted to be cured by the Act of Uni- 
formity was a grave evil. No man could then see to 
what greater evils it might grow. The attempt to 
secure order by force commended itself to wise and 
good men. It is not necessary to accuse the Church's 
officers of conscious tyranny. They used what seemed 
to them the simplest and most efficacious method at 
hand. Time has shown their fearful blunder. They 
meant to act as statesmen ; they acted as doctrinaires. 
The confusion of the time was but the restless exu- 
berance of the incoming spiritual life to «a half-dead 
Church. In time its excesses would have righted them- 
selves. The attempt to secure uniformity in worship 
has only been successful, even within the Church, at 
those times when its life has been at the lowest. Every 
outburst of religious vigor has either strained the uni- 
formity or broken a fragment from the Church. The 
Puritan, the Presbyterian, the Quaker, and the Methodist 
have each in their turn been lost to the Church which 
is their home, by making the house too strait for them. 
After two hundred and eighty years the assembled 
Bishops of the whole Pan-Anglican Communion have 
recorded their judgment that uniformity in discipline 
and worship is not only not to be compelled, but not to 
be expected. They declare with a unanimous voice, 
that with consensus upon the Creed, the Scriptures, the 
Sacraments administered in our Lord's own words, and 
the historical Episcopate, the people are to be left to 
the guidance of the Spirit which Christ has promised to 
His Church. The lesson has taken long to learn, and 
the teaching has been most costly. It cost the Church 



THE STAGE. 13 

of England first the good-will, and then the presence, 
of those who carried away from her enough of devotion 
and vigor to found a new Nation and alien Churches. 

Here, then, in 1600, were all the elements waiting 
from which to create a new world. A fertile continent 
waiting to be settled ; a righteous and virile people, ill 
at ease at home, for colonists ; adventurous captains 
with their ships and crews ready to transport them ; 
professional soldiers ready at hand to garrison the new 
colonies, and fight against their savage foes. The flood 
of immigration approached America like the coming in 
of the tide. Its first waves touched only the nearest 
shore, and receded. Many unrecorded bands of adven- 
turers visited, and quickly left the coast, from New- 
foundland to Georgia. The story of each is romantic, 
but not to the purpose here. 1 

1 Bancroft : History of the U, S., vol. i. passim. 



14 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE VIRGINIANS. 

The first organized attempt to found a colony was 
made in 1585. Sir Walter Raleigh gathered a company 
Raleigh's °^ one hundred and fifty people, largely 
colony. composed of gentlemen of the sword, secured 

them an outfit and the means of transportation, which 
they used to find a land at Roanoke which they named 
"Virginia," for the maiden queen. They were not 
the stuff from which successful colonists are made. 
They were not set together in families. Only two 
women were in the colony. Of one of these, the 
daughter of the Governor, was born Virginia Dare, the 
first white child in America. Improvidence, brawling, 
ignorance of husbaudry, and wanton quarrels with the 
natives, soon brought the ill-starred colony to want, 
destitution, and despair. Their governor, White, strove 
manfully to save them from the Indians and from them- 
selves, but in vain. They sat down starving upon the 
shore, and when at their wits' end, hailed the sight of 
an English man-of-war on her way home from the West 
Indies. Her commander consented to bear away with 
him those who wished to go, and promised to send 
speedy succor to those who stayed. The chaplain of 
the ship landed and baptized the little baby girl, Vir- 
ginia Dare, together with Manteo, the first convert from 



THE VIRGINIANS. 15 

the Indians. These were the first-fruits, not only of the 
Church of England, but of Christianity, in the colonies. 
Eighty of the company chose to stay, while the rest 
sailed away to merry England. Those who stayed, in- 
cluding the two women, were never heard of again. 
Their promised relief never came, or came so many 
years later that no living member of the colony was 
found. Half a century afterward Indians with blue eyes 
and brown hair were seen along the Potomac, who were 
supposed to have in their veins all that was left of the 
blood of the Raleigh colony. 

In 1603 a ship's company spent the summer in 
Plymouth Harbor, on the coast of Massachusetts, but 
made no permanent lodgement. 

In the spring of 1605 a company landed at the mouth 
of the Kennebec. While the summer lasted the}^ throve 
Gorgas' i n the cabins and little garden patches which 

colony. they planted, but in the long, bleak winter 

which followed they were reduced to starvation and 
despair, and returned hungry to England, carrying with 
them three Indian chieftains. These were taken in 
charge by a wealthy gentleman and zealous Churchman, 
Sir Ferdinando Gorges. For three years he kept them 
in his house, teaching them English, and learning 
from them about their people. Then he organized an 
expedition at his own charge, and brought it out him- 
self, landing again at the Kennebec in the summer of 
1606. By the time winter came his company had built 
a fort, a log church, and fifty cabins. This settlement 
of Churchmen maintained a precarious existence for 
many years ; indeed, it never became quite extin- 



16 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

guislied. But it had for its enemies a cruel climate 
and a barren soil, and a few years later the relentless 
enmity of the Massachusetts Puritans. The Church 
has had there a longer continuous existence than in any 
other place in America, but it did little more than live. 
It never became a colony, and hardly an organized 
church. It served for a century only to keep the 
lamp of the Church showing a flickering light in the 
New England. 

All the " ventures," so far, were without recognition 
from either Church or State. They were the enterprises 
of individuals or companies without either political 
status or ecclesiastical authority. 

It was to Virginia first that the Church and State of 
England were to be transplanted. Raleigh's ill-fated 
The Virginia company had never been quite forgotten. 
Company. Relief expeditions had been projected, and 
had come to nothing, until it was deemed too late to 
rescue them. But the memory of the flowery banks and 
fertile meadows of Albemarle had never quite passed 
away. London merchants thought of it as a new field 
for trade. Bishops and clergy thought of the Indians 
as heathen to be saved. Statesmen had it in mind as a 
place wherein to found new states. All England then 
dreamed of colonies. A company was formed, with 
archbishops, peers, merchants, and high officers of 
state for its members. Captain John Smith, who had 
come home from fighting the Turk under the walls of 
Constantinople, was secured as the military commander. 
The good priest Robert Hunt was commissioned chap- 
lain. The Crown gave a grant of land from 34° to 45° 



THE VIRGINIANS. 17 

north latitude, — from the Bay of Fundy to South Caro- 
lina. Substantial Churchmen, with their wives and chil- 
dren and goods, offered for colonists. Prayers were 
said in churches for the safety of the expedition. With 
the bishop's benediction, the king's favor, and the peo- 
ple's good-will, they sailed away. Their plan was to 
take up again Raleigh's abandoned settlement, and they 
were not without hope of being welcomed by some of 
his people, who might still be living. But the fleet lost 
its reckoning, and, instead of making a landfall at Albe- 
marle, they sailed into Chesapeake Bay in April, 1607. 
They named their settlement for the king, Jamestown. 
By their charter the Law and the Church of England 
were made bounden. Their first act, on landing, was 
to kneel and hear Chaplain Hunt read the prayers and 
thanksgiving for a safe voyage. It is not our task to 
trace the civil and industrial prosperity of the colony. 
Their church was built as soon as their cabins were, and 
The first as they m oved into better houses God's house 
church. was adorned to correspond. Their first sanctu- 

ary was, the chaplain writes, " a pen of poles with a sail 
for a roof, and for a pulpit a bar lashed between two con- 
venient trees." In this rude temple the Holy Communion 
was celebrated for the first time in America, according 
to the Liturgy of the Church, June 21, 1607. 

Virginia was marked off from the settlements soon 
to follow by two things, — ■ it was a royal colony, and a 
Church one. It was simply a little English parish, 
bringing its minister, its Prayer-Book, its customs, and 
its thoughts, to set them down in the midst of an un- 
occupied land. It set about to reproduce the old home 



18 THE ENGLISH CHUECH IN THE COLONIES. 

life, but it had to gain by bitter experience the knowl- 
edge of how to win a livelihood, — the knowledge which 
soon became a second nature to the settlers. They had 
to learn how to deal with the crafty natives, to coax a 
rich land to yield its substance, to learn new modes of 
husbandry, to adjust themselves to a new life. The 
task was a trying one. Cold, drought, malaria, and 
hunger brought them to the verge of despair, but 
through it all good Chaplain Hunt was their stay and 
comfort. If they were in perils oft, they were in prayer 
oft. At times they despaired. Once they determined 
to abandon the enterprise, but, while they were gather- 
ing to embark, the long-looked-for relief ship hove in 
sight, bearing supplies and new people. The shed in 
which the prayers had wont to be said was replaced by 
a more comfortable building, of which the chaplain 
speaks with grateful pleasantry as "a homely thing 
like a barn, set on cratchets, covered with rafters, sods, 
and brush." 

A wide-spread and deep interest was created in the 

settlement among all classes at home. To "have a 

venture" to the colonies quicklv came to be 

English in- ^ J 

tsrest in ven- the fashion. New-comers came out by the 
score. The population grew apace. Col- 
lections were taken by the Archbishop's orders in the 
province of Canterbury for the Church in Virginia. 
One sent Bibles and Prayer-Books, and another, Com- 
munion plate. Chaplain Hunt did not long remain the 
only priest. Others came as they were needed. These 
first clergy were godly and well-learned men, — differ- 
ing widely from the clerical adventurers who succeeded 



THE VIRGINIANS. 19 

them a generation later. Good Church people at home 
promoted schemes for the advantage of their cousins in 
the Virginias. One society undertook to provide for 
them wives who should be worthy helpmeets for such 
men, and sent them over at a hundred pounds of tobacco 
a head. An official acknowledges in clerkly phrase the 
arrival of " two shiploads of women in fair condition." 

Their religious duty to the aborigines was not neg- 
lected. The good priest Alexander Whittaker gained 
Indian mis- ^ or himself the title of " Apostle to the Ind- 
sions. ians." Indian children were secured and 

placed in the homes of the settlers, to be trained in 
decency and Christianity. Pocahontas, the comely 
daughter of the unfriendly chief Powhattan, 
was secured. The newly widowed John 
Rolf was moved alike by her beauty and her heathenism, 
and to make her a convert took her to wife. Other 
missionaries joined Whittaker in his work among the 
Virginians and in the forest. They reported to the 
authorities at home that there was eyery promise of 
bringing these heathen soon to a knowledge of the 
Gospel, and asked for still more men. The Indians 
were friendly, hospitable, and full of interest. But 
before the missionaries' report reached England the 
treacherous savages burst into the settlement, with the 
great massacre of May 22, 1622. Missionaries, con- 
verts, and frontier settlers were all alike butchered, and 
the work came to an end. It had run swiftly through 
all the phases which characterized the projects to Chris- 
tianize the Indians for two centuries and more. 

It is of interest to note that Virginia was the only 



20 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

place where a colony of Church people lived their life 
in the presence of hostile savages. The Puritans on 
the banks of the Connecticut, the Moravians in the 
valley of the Wyoming, the Presbyterians on the Alle- 
ghany, and the Baptists on the Holston and the Tennes- 
see bore their rifles with them to Church and gathered 
their corn while listening for the dreaded war-whoop. 
But, save in the early days of Virginia, this was never 
the experience of Church of England people. There 
are no Boones and Crocketts, Robertsons and Clarkes 
in the annals of the American Church. People of 
another faith soon passed beyond them and formed a 
barrier behind which the Churchman was safe from 
this peril. But as the Churchman was shut off from 
the danger, so he was shut out from the kindly fellow- 
feeling which bound together the other peoples who 
through generations shared a common peril. This lack 
of sympathy deepened into rooted malevolence when a 
hundred and fifty years later the British government, to 
whom the Church was bound, took for allies the un- 
speakable savages whom the Baptists and Presbyterians 
had been fighting with for four generations. 

Virginia soon recovered from the massacre of 1622. 
The colonist had learned his foe. Their valiant Cap- 
tain Smith scouted along the frontiers and carried the 
war into the enemy's country. When he was about to 
start upon an expedition into the backwoods he received 
from the authorities orders that " every day the Prayers 
should be read, with a psalm," at which order being 
carried out he gravely records that " the salvages were 
mightily amazed." 



THE VIRGINIANS. 21 

Meanwhile the colony had grown apace. Two thou- 
sand immigrants arrived in a single year. Land-hunters 
pushed up the James, the Chickahominy, and the York. 
New settlements were planted and new parishes organ- 
ized. The Church at home was mindful of its duty, 
and clergy came as fast as they were needed. In 1619, 
there were enough counties settled to send delegates 

who organized the first representative as- 
First repre- ° x 
sentative as- sembly in America. They met to establish 

self-government on this continent. By a 

strange irony, while they were in session, a Dutch ship, 

the " Jesus," brought to Jamestown and sold the first 

cargo of African slaves. 1 

With the civil legislation of the Assembly we are not 
directly concerned. But their acts relating to religion 
show a vivid picture of the place and time. It was 
enacted 2 that : — 

Care should be taken by the officers that the people 

resort to church on the Sabbath Day, the penalty of 

absence to be a pound of tobacco, or for a 

Laws con- 
cerning re- month's absence fifty pounds ; that all who 

till the ground, of what quality soever, pay 
tithes to the minister; that there be throughout the 
colony an uniformity of Doctrine and Worship; that 
Ministers and Church Wardens present to the Midsum- 
mer Assizes a return of official acts, and also the names 
and offences of all persons of profane and ungodly life, 
common swearers, drunkards, blasphemers, neglecters 
of the Sacraments, Sabbath-breakers, adulterers, forni- 

1 "Williams : History of Negro Race in America, vol. i. p. 116. 

2 Anderson : vol. i. p. 460. 



22 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IX THE COLONIES. 

cators, slanderers, and also of all Masters and Mis- 
tresses who neglect to catechise their children and 
servants ; that no man shall disparage or speak lightly 
of a Magistrate or Minister, or be married other than by 
the Book of Common Prayer; that Ministers shall 
preach at each of their stations at least once a year ; 
that they shall visit any one who is dangerously sick ; 
shall administer the Sacrament at least three times a 
year ; shall not drink to excess, dice or play cards for 
money ; that each minister shall have a hundred pounds 
of tobacco per year, and also the twentieth calf, pig, and 
kid, these to be kept by the owner till weaned and then 
rendered by the Church Warden at a time and place 
publicly fixed ; that if the Church Warden fail to render 
them the value be collected from him by distress ; that 
the fee for each marriage shall be two shillings, for 
christening nothing, for churching one shilling, and for 
burying one shilling; that the cost of raising and re- 
pairing churches shall be assessed upon the parishes ; 
that the members of the Legislature shall attend Divine 
Service " upon the tlryrde beatinge of a drume " under 
a fine of two shillings sixpence. 

The resemblance of these enactments of the Episco- 
palians of Virginia to those soon to be passed by the 
Spirit of the Puritan colony of Massachusetts will sug- 
laws. g es t itself at once. But when the two legis- 

lations come to be compared, both in matter and in 
spirit, the difference will be still more evident. They 
both trespass upon what seems to us to be liberty of 
conscience. But there is an inquisitory particularity 



THE VIRGINIANS. 23 

of interference with personal rights, and a savage religi- 
osity, in the Puritans' laws, which is not present in those 
of the Churchmen. They approached their task of law- 
making with radically different tempers and purposes. 
The Virginians were content when they had made such 
regulations as they deemed necessary to the well-being 
of society. The Puritans felt themselves responsible 
for the present and eternal destiny of the individual. 
The Churchmen legislated for this life only, and had 
sufficient understanding to fulfil their task fairly well. 
The Puritans legislated for the life eternal. It was 
because they encroached upon the prerogatives of God 
that they made havoc of men. 

At first the acts of the Assembly were easily en- 
forced ; in fact they enforced themselves. They but 
expressed the wishes of the people in the premises. 
But with the increase of immigration the character of 
the population changed. At first it was all of those 
who were emphatically " for Church and Crown." The 
wives kindly sent out to the settlers were all Church- 
women. The Archbishop of Canterbury was their 
patron, and the Bishop of London was a director in the 
company. But as the country opened up, and the 
tobacco and fur trade became more lucrative, men of 
another sort began to come. Men who sat loosely to 
both , Church and Crown came for fortunes, and Puri- 
tans and Quakers came for broader liberty. These last 
were not molested. The not very onerous tax needed 
to support the Establishment, regularly levied, was 
paid by them without any evidence of reluctance. A 



2i THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

man in Virginia was much more ready to pay his tax to 
support a Church whose advantages for himself and his 
children he could have for the asking, than was a man 
in Massachusetts to support an Establishment whose 
spiritual benefactions were denied him until he should 
first pass a rigorous examination as to his own spiritual 
state. What men always and everywhere rebel against 
is the application of a human test to separate the sheep 
from the goats. In Massachusetts the sheep were 
marked and goats were branded. In Virginia sheep 
and goats were both alike shorn for the support of the 
fold which was open to them both. Little by little the 
Relaxation of Church relaxed its laws, and we must say 
manners. also, its manners. Plantation life grew easy 
and abundant. Theology never throve in it. The 
clergy began to be planters on their own account, and 
were content, for the most part, to be good men and 
good neighbors. Missionary zeal slowly died out. The 
Dissenters built their meeting-houses undisturbed, some- 
times aided by the gift of a generous slice of land from 
the parson's own plantation. Colonel Esmond is a fair 
type of the Virginia Churchman, who began to be seen 
half a century earlier than Thackeray places him. The 
colony grew to be peaceful, prosperous, and safe. Com- 
placent, with no very exalted ideals either in religion 
or morals, its general loyalty to Church and Crown 
remained unchanged. When the Commonwealth came, 
the Virginians utterly refused to recognize the disestab- 
lishment of the Church in England, and ignored the 
Perfect Model of the "Saints." At the Restoration 



THE VIRGINIANS. 25 

they pursued the even tenor of a way they had never 
interrupted. When the eighteenth century opened, the 
Church was recognized by the law, and, upon the whole, 
contained the people, of the colony. 

From it we now turn to look at that rival English 
people who first became its neighbors in the New 
World. 



26 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PURITANS. 

To comprehend the Puritans in New England we 
must first look at them in Old England. The Acts 
of " Uniformity " and " Supremacy " precipitated the 
confused ecclesiastical life in England into its three 
component ingredients, Churchmen, Romanists, and In- 
dependents. They compelled men to range themselves. 
It took half a generation for them to find out definitely 
to which camp each belonged, but it created the neces- 
sity for an ultimate choice, however long it might be 
postponed. The three camps were very unequal in 
size. The Romanists were few in numbers and utterly 
discredited in the eyes of the people, in point of their 
faith and their loyalty. 

Churchmen and " Puritans," however, were not very 
unequal in weight and numbers. Romanists and Puri- 
Not unequal ^ans complained of the same grievances. It 
division. was {lie " Supremacy " even more than the 
" Uniformity " which burdened their souls. They 
might possibly have borne the enforced Liturgy, which 
was less an abomination before it was enforced. This 
they could have learned to endure, and might have 
learned to love. At worst, this only constrained their 
conduct. But the Supremacy touched their souls. To 
the Romanist, the Supreme Head of the Church was 



THE PUKITANS. 27 

Christ, and the Pope his vice-gerent. To the Puritan 
the Supreme Head of the Church was Christ, and He 
had and could have no vice-gerent. To compel one 
upon his faith as a Christian to swear allegiance to any 
secular authority, was not tolerable. Romanist and 
Puritan alike held that between the Church and the 
State there could be no compact made as between 
equals, but that in the organization of society the secu- 
lar must be subordinate to the spiritual. The Puritan 
could not find it in his conscience to answer before any 
civil tribunal for his religious conduct, much less to 
swear upon his faith as a Christian that he would 
acknowledge any mortal man, even though he be King 
of England, as " Supreme Head of the Church." It was 
worse than Popery ! It was a doctrine of devils ! It 
was Antichrist ! He would go to jail first ; he would 
fight ; he would emigrate, and found a society where 
Antichrist would not be allowed to exalt himself into 
the seat of God ; a society in which the saints should 
rule as they had the right to reign. 

To the Churchman this position was incomprehensi- 
ble. To his mind, England was simply a nation corn- 
Churchmen's P ose( l °f Christian men, in which the Church 
theory. anc [ the State were not differentiated and 

could not be. The King as head of the realm was head 
of the Church, ipso facto. To quarrel with it was like 
quarrelling with the structure of the human body or the 
solar system. The man who did so must either be mad 
or have some sinister motive which he hid behind the 
plea of a tender conscience. It was as reasonable and 
natural for King and Parliament to decree a doctrine 



28 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

as to levy a tax, to punish a heretic as to imprison a 
thief, — for were they not both offenders against the 
common order ? For any man to boggle at avowing his 
allegiance to the powers ordained by God, was to avow 
himself a bad citizen, and bad citizens should be made 
to feel the hand of the law. 

One little group of men there was who were wise be- 
yond their time. They saw even then that religious and 
secular things each had their own sphere. 

The Pilgrims 

They perceived that while the Church is "the 
blessed company of all faithful people," it has its exist- 
ence in a world filled with all people. They saw that 
while Christians live in the State they must, perforce, 
have relations with it. They dreamed of no theocracy 
where the saints should reign as the chosen of God ; 
but they did dream of a state where the things that 
belong to God and the things that belong to Caesar 
might be mutually apportioned in peace. Under the 
lead of their good pastor, John Robinson, a priest of 
the Church of England, and one of the noblest men of 
his own or any time, this little band of pilgrims set 
upon their wanderings in search of their new Canaan. 
They sought it first in Holland. But after half a gen- 
eration their hearts turned back to Merrie England. 
They wished their children to retain their mother 
tongue. There was not room for them and theirs in 
the dyke-belted Low Countries. To England they 
could not return. Their thoughts roved over the sea to 
where the English flag was planted on an unpossessed 
land. The good ship Mayflower carried them away, 
and in 1620 they landed in Plymouth Bay. But they 



THE PURITANS. 29 

were men born out of due time. Their little company 
never grew large. Their pious leader said of them, more 
truly than he knew, that " they knew they were pilgrims, 
and looked not much on the things of earth, but lifted 
up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, and 
quieted their spirits." " Deeply touched as all must be 
by the idyllic grace of the story of the Pilgrims, and 
pleasant as it is to linger over it, yet candor compels us 
to acknowledge that the true genesis of New England 
life is not to be traced to Plymouth, and that the Pil- 
grims had no direct and but little indirect influence in 
shaping its later development." 1 

It was with the Puritan colony who landed in Massa- 
chusetts Bay in 1629 that the New England life really 
The Salem began. Five ships brought them over, two 
colony. hundred and fifty strong. The projector of 

the enterprise was Arthur Lake, the Puritan Bishop of 
Bath and Wells. He declared that if he were not so 
old he would go out with the colony himself. 2 It is 
interesting to speculate what might have been the de- 
velopment of Puritan New England if Bishop Lake had 
come ! But all the colonists were members of the 
English Church. Their leader was Rev. John White, 
Vicar of Dorchester. Francis Skelton of Clare Hall, 
and Francis Higginson of Jesus College, Cambridge, 
Episcopal Ministers both, were forward in the enter- 
prise. Why, then, did a company of English Church- 
men, led by priests, and with a bishop for their patron, 
leaving home with words of love for their Mother on 

1 Bishop Harris: Christianity and Civil Society, p. 95. 

2 Bancroft: vol i. p. 234, last edition. 



30 THE ENGLISH CHUKCH IN THE COLONIES. 

their lips, become her sullen and relentless foes ? It is 
not necessary and would not be true to charge them 
either with hypocrisy or ingratitude. The logic of 
events is more potent than the theories of man. The 
root of the quarrel was partly in the situation and 
partly in the unconscious temper of the men them- 
selves. 

The theory of England was that every subject of the 
realm was a member of the Church. The relation estab- 
lished a mutual obligation. It formed the 

English & 

theory of the basis for protection and control on the one 
side ; it created the duty of obedience and 
support on the party of the second part. The King was 
to be a nursing father to the Church, but a father whose 
counsels must be heeded under penalty. The leaders 
of the Church naturally subscribed to the theory. They 
were glad to believe that Church and State were each 
necessary to the other, but they made the sad blunder 
of identifying the State with the Crown. They hailed 
as almost divine wisdom the apothegm of the " wisest 
fool in Christendom," when he summed up the whole 
situation in his famous words, " No bishop, no king." x 
They established the ill-omened conjunction of Episco- 
pacy and Monarchy. It did not occur to them that the 
obverse of James Fs aphorism might sometime be deemed 
true, — No king, no bishop. It seemed to them that 
they were doing well and wisely by linking Episcopacy 
to that institution which seemed to the world of their 



1 Graham: Colonial History of the United States, vol. i.p. 139. 
Wliitgift did not scruple to declare that " undoubtedly his Majesty 
spoke by the special assistance of God's Spirit." 



THE PURITANS. 31 

day the most abiding of all things. But their mistake 
well-nigh worked ruin to the Church. It led it to form 
that fatal friendship with the Stuarts which brought 
Episcopacy into discredit with half of England, extin- 
guished it in Scotland, and made it impossible for a hun- 
dred and fifty years in America. This ill-starred alliance 
remained as a sentiment many a year after it had degen- 
erated from a mere mistake of judgment to a very inan- 
ity. There are probably not wanting Churchmen even 
yet who, in defiance of the facts of history, and with 
slight regard for the honor of the Ten Commandments, 
still think and speak of " the blessed martyr, King 
Charles.". 1 And this in the face of the fact that, with 
the single exception of poor Queen Anne, the Church 
has never had a whole-hearted friend on the English 
throne, from the time of James I. until iioav. 

Now, when the Puritans left England they uncon- 
sciously turned their backs to the theory upon which 
Puritans and tne Church had taken its stand. Even had 
their theory. t he theory been true, it would have been 
impossible of application to a people angered for other 
causes, and farther away from the machinery of govern- 
ment than now would be a colony on Lake Nyanza. 
When they landed, and saw the situation, they saw they 
had expatriated themselves. They had left both Church 
and State behind. The Episcopate, by becoming the 
creature of the Crown, had lost its power to follow the 
Church's children. Had the English Church understood 

1 A well-known bishop, still living, tells of a Scotch clergyman who, 
while visiting in this country, was asked by him before going to Church, 
if he would object at all to reading the Prayer for the President. 

" Hoot, man," was his reply, " dinna I pray for the Hoose o' Hanover?" 



32 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

then what both her fathers and her sons have known, 
the true catholic and independent foundation of the 
Church, she could have adjusted her spiritual machinery 
to this and all the colonies. But the things which made 
for her peace were hid from her eyes. The Salem colony 
saw at once what it took the people of Maryland and 
Virginia a century to realize, — that the Church of Eng- 
land, holding the theories she did, could never become 
the Church of the colonies, however deeply she might 
yearn over her departing children. 

But this necessity to live their own life, apart from 
their old relations, was realized by the Puritans quite as 
much, or more, through their temper than through their 
understanding. It was easy for them to reach a conclu- 
sion which, though logical, was entirely in accord with 
their wishes. The Puritan's temper has been his bane, 
The Puritan wn ^ e the Churchman's has been his strong 
t3mp3r. deliverer. The former is now only a charac- 

ter in history, while the latter is a present force, chiefly 
because, in the long run, moral qualities win over intel- 
lectual ones. In the long and weary conflict of the 
Church with dissent, — that conflict precipitated by the 
Act of Uniformity, patched up by the Toleration Act of 
1688, and only ended within the memory of living men, 
— the strong weapon of the Church has been a certain 
broad kindliness of spirit. This, in the Puritans, was 
wanting. Their sour, saturnine, ultra-logical, disputa- 
tious temper led them, in Massachusetts, almost at once 
to the betrayal of their principles. They had come to 
found a State. Their ill-regulated enthusiasm changed 
their purpose, and they set about to found a Church. 



THE PURITANS. 33 

The prodigious rapidity of growth which marks the 
colony shows that there were multitudes like-minded with 
them. Immigrants came out by the scores and hundreds. 
hi the tenth year after their landing at Salem, a single 
fleet of twenty ships brought three thousand at one time. 
Before the colony was twenty years old it had pushed 
its outposts to the Connecticut, and planted settlements 
at Windsor and Hartford. They had followed the coast 
to Say brook and New Haven, had crossed the Sound to 
Long Island, and planted a settlement at the mouth of 
the Housatonic. 

And all this was done in the face of a fierce climate, 
a sterile soil, ferocious savages, and wild beasts. The 
grimness of the Nature where they struggled repro- 
duced itself again in the tempers of the men. The 
kindly Englishmen of old Boston and Dorchester became 
the gloonry, rigid religionists of the new toAvns which 
bore the old names. By the middle of the century they 
had founded fifty towns and villages, in each of which 
the ministers and magistrates were the sterner censors 
of the religion and manners of their stern people. From 
the first it had been determined that none but godly 
members of the Church should possess the rights of 
citizensnip. This accepted principle could not but 
beget both fanatics and hypocrites. They were domi- 
nated by the idea that they held the place in the New 
World which the chosen people of God had held in the 
old economy. They were to go in and possess the land ; 
to destroy utterly the old Canaanites ; not to permit a 
witch to live ; to observe all the commandments and 
statutes of the Lord to do them. They would have none 



34 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

but Church-members for freemen. They called their 
children Patience, Faith, Prudence, Deliverance, Thank- 
ful, and Hold-fast. Their laws present a picture of 
their lives. 1 Roman Catholics and Quakers were to be 
banished, and upon their return executed ; shipmasters 
Puritan were forbidden to bring in any of that ac- 

laws. cursed sect or their writings ; it Avas forbidden 

to run or walk on the Sabbath Day, except " reverently 
to meeting ;" to sweep the house, to cook, or to shave; 
mothers were advised not to kiss their children on the 
Lord's Day ; adultery, blasphemy, and idolatry were 
punishable by death; heresy and keeping Christmas 
Day, by fine and the stocks ; absence from public wor- 
ship, by fine and whipping ; renouncing Church mem- 
bership, or questioning the canonicity of any book in 
the Bible, by fine and banishment; all gaming was pro- 
hibited and cards and dice forbidden to be imported; 
dancing anywhere, and kissing a woman in the street, 
tw even in the way of honest salutation," was punished 
by flogging ; women were forbidden under penalty of im- 
prisonment to wear clothing beyond their station in life, 
to cut their hair like a man ; and for speaking ill of the 
minister, to have their tongues fastened in a split stick. 
Nor were these decrees empty threats. 2 Extracts 

1 It is hardly needful to say that the oft-quoted " Blue Laws''' are of 
no historic value. The authorities are, — 

The Book of General Laws and Liberties ; by authority of the General 
Court of Massachusetts 1640; Printed at Cambridge 1660; pp. 3, 8, 9, 26, 
33, 35, 38, (iH, 74; The same, revised and reprinted by Saml. Green, Cam- 
bridge 1<)72. General Laws and Liberties of Connecticut ; Revised and 
Published by order of General Assembly; Hartford 1G72; pp. 28, 37, 21. 
In illustration of these are the Abridgment of Ordinances of New Eng- 
land ; Neal ; Hutchison ; and Graham: Colonial History of United States. 
This last has the indorsement of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 

2 Graham: Colonial History of United States, vol. i. p. 189. Note. 



THE PURITAN'S. 3o 

from the early records of the Massachusetts courts 
show that John Wedgewood, for being in the company 
of drunkards, is ordered to sit in the stocks ; Catherine, 
the wife of Richard Cornish, was found suspicious of 
light conduct and admonished to take heed; Thomas 
Pettit, for suspicion of slander and stubbornness, to be 
severely whipped; Josiah Plaistowe, for stealing four 
baskets of corn, to be hereafter called by the name 
" Josias and not Mr.," as heretofore. A farmer in the 
New Hampshire settlement barely escaped excommuni- 
cation, by confession and repentance, for having killed 
a bear which was tearing up his garden on Sunday. 

One may readily suppose that this unnatural manner 
of religious life would revenge itself. " Religentem 
esse oportet, -non religiosum." The constant checking 
and repression of the natural life turned men's minds 
inward upon themselves. The hard mechanical service 
of rule was more than they could bear. The story of 
the internal revolts against it has often been told. The 
Baptists challenged it, and were coldly told to go else- 
where. The Quakers provoked it, and felt the dreadful 
weight of its hand. We are only concerned to ask, 
How shall the Church of England find a lodgement in 
such a society ? 

There is a feeble little settlement of Church people 
on the Kennebec, and the rapidly developing colony in 
™ . „ Virginia, but these have their hands more 

Planting of & 

the Church in than full with their own affairs. If the 
g an . Q^ lurc | 1 i s fo j^ p]_ an ted in New England, 
Old England must do it. No one would have prophe- 
sied in 1640 that two centuries and a half later the 



36 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

most rapid growth of the Episcopal Church would be 
in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Certainly there 
was nothing then to indicate it. 

When Sir Ferdinanclo Gorges' son Robert brought his 
little colony to the " Wessagusset " in 1623, an English 
clergyman was in the company as chaplain. In the late 
summer, when the colonists' cabins had been built and 
their gardens were growing, the chaplain, with a few 
companions, went for a visit to their neighbors at Ply- 
mouth. The first summer voyage of pleasure along the 
silent coast of Maine was this. The good Plymouth 
people received their guests with a hearty welcome. The 
best they had was set before them. In the intolerable 
loneliness of the grim solitude, a visitor was a godsend. 
The talk was upon the work in which both settlements 
were engaged. But the priestly capacity of their guest 
was silently ignored. As an Englishman and a fellow 
backwoodsman they would give him of their best. But 
when the Sunday came he was allowed to take his seat 
on the benches while their own pastor held forth. The 
visit was not greatly prolonged and was never repeated. 
Even at that early day there were Churchmen in 
Massachusetts. One of them, John Morton, was a con- 
spicuous figure in the earliest settlements. 
He had been a rich man and a generous liver 
in England. The attractive field which the New World 
offered for adventure and fortune drew him as it did so 
many of his kind. In 1623 he took up a plantation, 
including the present town of Quincy. He brought 
with him thirty servants, stock, utensils, and furniture. 
With his people about him, on the fat land he lived a 



THE PURITANS. 37 

jolly life. Choleric, devout, profane, and generous, he 
lived in Massachusetts the typical English squire. A 
tall pole set on the bluff in front of his house bore an 
English pennant. On Christmas Day abundant roasts 
of venison and mince pies galore rejoiced his people. 
Every morning he read prayers before his household, 
and on Sunday acted as their reader. Sr long as the 
kindly Pilgrims were his only neighbors, chere was no 
attempt to interfere with his ways. But when the 
Puritans came and multiplied, Morton's manners could 
no longer be tolerated. Presently he had a visit from 
"that worthy gentleman, John Endicott, of Boston," 
who grimly ordered the flagpole to be cut down and 
"to look to it there should be better walking." Morton 
raged and fumed and was roundly fined for " ungodly 
speech." He certainly did swear. He declared in a 
letter to a friend, " I found in these parts two sets of 
people, Christians and heathens, and these last more 
friendly and full of humanity." He refused to pay his 
fine, and was clapped in the bilboes. His servants and 
tenants were sharply brought into Puritan order. The 
stout old offender himself was packed off to England 
and warned to stay there. His offences were gravely 
asserted to be these two : — being " of a gay humor," 
and using the Book of Common Prayer. To the mind 
of the Puritan these were capital. One of them was an 
offence against the eternal fitness of things, and the other 
against the solemn judgment of the saints. In England 
Morton was foolish enough to write a book about his 
American neighbors. A copy of it found its way to 
Boston. It was not pleasant reading for " the worthy 



38 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

Mr. Endicott" and his friends. Still more foolishly, 
Morton ventured to follow his book himself, and came 
back to gather up the fragments of his estate. He had 
better have let it go. No sooner had he returned than 
he was seized and imprisoned. Several years of such 
discipline broke the old man's spirit and heart both, and 
he laid him down and died. 

In the original Puritan company were two brothers, 
Brown by name, a lawyer and a merchant, who declined 
The Brown to join in the action by Avhich the company 



brothers. 



se 



para ted from the Church. They had been 
born and reared in it, like all the others, and saw no 
reason why they should turn their backs upon it. 
When they landed, and had built their little cabins in 
the new town of Salem, they continued to gather their 
families morning and evening, and read with them the 
daily prayers. For a while this was coldly permitted 
by their neighbors. But presently the brothers ven- 
tured to gather a company together in a place distinct 
from the public assembly, and there " sundry times the 
Book of Common Prayer was read unto such as resorted 
thither." This that worthy gentleman Mr. Endicott 
could not endure. He " convented " the brothers be- 
fore himself and the ministers. Very plain speech 
ensued. The ministers argued that the enforced use 
of the Prayer-Book was the very thing they had not 
been able to abide on the other side of the water, and 
that it would be the height of folly to allow it to creep 
into a place of honor here. The Browns replied, re- 
minding them of the language they themselves had 
used only a few weeks before, when they had solemnly 



THE rURITAKS. 39 

declared that they had no notion of separating from the 
Church their mother, but only to protest against her 
abuses and corruptions. The Prayer-Book they cer- 
tainly could not call a corruption, since it had been 
used till lately by themselves, and was, in substance, 
either the words of God or of godly men. They 
accused the ministers openly, and not politely — for 
they were sturdy Englishmen, these Browns — of being 
"separatists" and "Anabaptists." The governor and 
council, however, " finding these two to be of high spirit 
and their speeches and practices tending to mutiny and 
faction," — the governor told them that "New England 
was no place for such as they." The governor was 
quite right. The New England of that time was no 
place for any except that peculiar people who had 
embarked upon their religio-political experiment, nor 
would it be until that experiment should have been 
carried out to its necessary failure. The Browns, with 
their families, were ordered to return to England, which 
they did within the year, losing their share in the colo- 
nial venture. 

While the Salem people were diligently purging their 
colony of the Church leaven, a Church of England 
clergyman was quietly living and prospering, 
William far away from neighbors, where Boston now 
• stands. The Rev. William Blaxton was a 
quiet, peaceable man, who, wearied with the din of 
religious controversy at home, had come to America to 
be at rest. He had taken up a farm, built a comforta- 
ble house, planted orchards, and made for himself and 
family a pleasant home, before the Salem people came. 



40 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IX THE COLONIES. 

It was not to exercise his ministry he had come, but 
to escape the strife of tongues. One clay in 1630, 
Winthrop, with a little band of land-hunters, laid down 
their packs and built their fire at Charlestown. Blax- 
ton's servants reported their presence, and the kindly 
man brought the cold and hungry hunters to his house. 
They admired his place u as a paradise," being chiefly 
delighted with his apples, whose fragrance reminded 
them of home. From his house they went morning 
by morning to their clearings, building their cabins in 
Charlestown, to which they soon removed. New set- 
tlers flocked in, and the town of Boston grew apace. 
Soon Blaxton was surrounded. His peaceful solitude 
was gone. A town was built and a community organ- 
ized around him. He was graciously permitted to 
become a " freeman ; " but his Episcopal neighbors 
Maverick and Walford were denied the same privilege. 
No attempt was made by Blaxton to hold services of 
the Church. But gradually and surely he was made to 
feel that "New England was no place for such as he." 
When the town passed an order that only those of the 
" Established Order " should be counted as freemen, 
thus taking away his citizenship, he sadly accepted its 
paltry offer of one hundred and fifty dollars for his 
property, and moved away. " I left England," he says, 
" because I misliked my lords the bishops : I leave here 
because I like still less my lords the brethren." Provi- 
dence, in Rhode Island, afforded him an asylum, as it 
had Roger Williams. The effect of his removal was to 
quicken his own zeal in his office. He began at once 
in his new home to officiate as a minister, and continued 
to do so until he died, an old man. 



THE PURITANS. 41 

Blax ton's removal closed the Prayer-Book in Massa- 
chusetts for fifty years. The Churchmen who were in 
the colony then, as well as the considerable 

Churchmen J 

inMassachu- number who came from time to time, con- 
formed with what grace they could to the 
" Established Order." They went to the meeting- 
house, had their children baptized by and received the 
Sacrament at the hands of the Puritan ministers. It 
was the easier for them to do so for the reason that the 
early Puritan ministers had been in point of fact Epis- 
copally ordained ; and also because the idea of the 
exclusive validity of Episcopal Orders was not gener- 
ally entertained at that time by the great majority of 
Churchmen even in England. By conforming to the 
Puritan order of things they did violence only to their 
tastes and habits and not their consciences. 

But by this time the zeal of the Puritans had grown 
into bigotry. They were not content with closing the 
Prayer-Book in their own territory. Massachusetts 
claimed jurisdiction over the Eastern Colony as well. 
Nothing less than the suppression of the Church there 
would content them. By vexatious legal proceedings, 
and by still harder measures, they, to all practical pur- 
poses, succeeded. By 1680 there was only one Episco- 
pal clergyman in the whole of New England. Old 
Father Jordan still lived in Portsmouth, but broken in 
fortune and in spirit. 

New England had purged herself of all disturbers of 
the peace. The Baptists had been banished to Rhode 
Island. The Quakers had been whipped and driven 
into the wilderness. The Churchmen had been harried 



42 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

either into conformity or exile. But their success was 
its own Nemesis. 

In 1684 their charter was withdrawn. They had 
sided with Parliament against the Crown. When the 
Withdrawal Crown was at last triumphant the enmities 
of the char- they had so diligently cultivated returned 
to plague them. They might no longer be 
trusted with the powers of government. The American 
Theocracy, after a gloomy life of sixty years, fell in a 
day. By the resumption of the charter, Massachusetts, 
including all the territory east of the New York line, 
became a "royal" colony. 1 Its special privileges were 
gone. Its territory became again part of the kingdom. 
The Church of England became established in the eyes 
of English law. 

A wide door seemed now to be opened to the Church. 
But, unfortunately, her champions proved as ready to 
take the sword as their enemies had been. They had 
now the secular power on their side. But it was Brit- 
ish power. It required still another century of failure 
before the Church could learn that this which she so 
fondly believed to be her strength was her hopeless 
weakness. Meanwhile she exploited it. 

On a May day in 1686 the man-of-war Rose sailed 
into Boston harbor, bearing the first governor and the 
Church lean- first incumbent. The ill-starred alliance 
British Gov- began its century of failure. Boston had 
emment. five thousand inhabitants, and three meet- 
ing-houses. The frigate arrived on a Thursday. On 
Sunday the new clergyman read service and preached 

* Graham: Colonial History of U.S., vol. i. p. 254. 



THE PURITANS. 43 

in the Town Honse. The room was small and ill 
arranged. But it was packed, and a great crowd of 
curious hung about the open door and windows. Mr. 
Ratcliffe was pronounced on all hands to be "an ex- 
traordinary tine preacher." Next day a wedding was 
celebrated, and with a ring ! During the week Mr. 
Ratcliffe formally requested from the Town Council the 
use of one of the meeting-houses to hold service in. 
His request was refused, and he was recommended to 
continue using the Town House. The governor, fol- 
lowing his instructions, did not interfere. The people 
of the town, of whom a considerable number had always 
held in spirit to the Church of their birth, continued to 
attend the services in the hall. In June they took steps 

to organize a parish. A vestry was chosen, 
Parish organ- 

izedin composed of Ed. Randolph, Captain Lydgett, 

Messrs. Luscombe, White, Macartie, Clarke, 
Turferry, Ravenscroft, and Bullivant. The rector's 
salary was fixed at $200 a year. They asked for a 
share of the fund raised by taxation in the town, for 
the support of public worship, and were refused. Every 
slight and affront which might safely be used was put 
upon them. Social pressure in its extremest form was 
brought to bear against any who might forsake the 
meeting-house for the Church. But the congregation 
continued to grow until the mean Town House could 
in no wise accommodate it. They tried to borrow one 
of the meeting-houses at such times as it was not in use 
by its own congregation. They were answered that 
" we cannot, with a good conscience, consent that our 
meeting-house should be made use of for the Common- 
Prayer worship." 



4-1 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

Upon the arrival of Andros as governor, the situation 
took on a new complexion. He was too domineering in 
Governor temper and too pronounced a Churchman to 
Andros. carry out effectively the conciliatory policy 

which the home government was just then experiment- 
ing with. For six months, in obedience to instruction, 
he put enough constraint upon himself to keep his 
official hands off. He went with the other Episcopa- 
lians to the little Town House and sat upon the hard 
benches with what dignity and comfort he could. But 
after six months his ill-disguised impatience broke out. 
The personal discomfort might have been endured. 
The hinderance to the growth of the Church, as such, 
did not disturb him much. But that his Excellency 
the Governor, the representative of His Royal Majesty, 
should be stewed week after week in a mean little 
barn, while the rascally, canting, crop-eared Puritans 
should be sitting at their ease in comfortable sanctua- 
ries, — this was not to be borne ! By the governor's 
order the " Old South Meeting-House " was appropri- 
ated to the new parish for morning service, leaving 
its own congregation to use it in the afternoon, if 
they liked. There was no appeal from this order to 
any human authority. The Puritans therefore changed 
the venue to a court in which it had always been their 
peculiarity to believe themselves influential; they ap- 
_ pointed and kept a day of fasting and prayer, 

meeting- They also made representations to the gov- 
ernor which led him to partially relax the 
order. The meeting-house was to be used on alter- 
nate Sunday mornings by the two congregations. For 



THE PURITANS. 45 

some time this arrangement continued. But it worked 
badly. The Churchmen, when it was their morning in 
possession, grew strongly rubrical, which made the ser- 
vice so long that the afternoon was half spent before 
the Puritans could have their turn. When the Puri- 
tans were in possession they " had such freedom " in 
prayer and the expounding of the Word, that no time 
was left for Evening Prayer. The unseemly spectacle 
became common Sunday after Sunday of one congrega- 
tion, shivering in an ill-humor outside, waiting for the 
one piously chuckling inside to have done and get 
away. The Church had been placed, as usual, by the 
governor, in a false position. They had no right to the 
meeting-house at all, either at law or in equity. In 
England such a thing as its forcible use would have 
been impossible, and this the Boston people very well 
knew. There was nothing for the Church to do but to 
abandon its claim with what grace it might. They 
determined to build for themselves. A subscription 
was started for the purpose, which produced a sufficient 
amount almost at once. Pity they had not done it six 
months sooner. For by now the Puritans were so exas- 
perated that they refused to sell a foot of ground for any 
such purpose. Sewall, in his Diary, writes : " Captain 
Davis spoke to me to-day for land to set a church on. 
Told him I could not and would not put Mr. Cotton's 
land to such a use : first, because I would not set up that 
which the people of New England came over to avoid ; 
and secondly, the land was entailed ! " After repeated 
failure to make private purchase, the governor came 
again with heavy hand to the rescue. By pressure and 



46 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

thinly disguised threats, he persuaded the council to 
cede enough of common land for the purpose. On 
Kind's ^ the "King's Chapel" was built, at a cost 

Chapel built. f |l,800. With a church of its own, the 
parish grew more rapidly and more wholesomely. 

But when the news of the Revolution of 1688 reached 
New England, and it was learned that the trusty Prot- 
estant, and, as they believed, Presbyterian, William of 
Orange, was on the throne, the Puritans thought their 
innings had come. Without waiting for accurate infor- 
mation, they clapped Governor Andros into jail, shipped 
the Episcopal rector off to England, smashed the win- 
dows of the church,, pelted its walls with mud and filth, 
mobbed and harried the Churchmen within an inch of 
their lives. For months the poor, dilapidated church 
stood silent and desolate, bearing scurrilous extempores 
scribbled on its walls alluding to Jezebel and the Scarlet 
Whore. 

But the Puritans presently discovered that they had 
been premature. They learned that William was not 
the man they had taken him to be. With no enthusi- 
astic love to the Church, — or to anything else, for that 
matter, — it was now his Church, officially, and must 
be decently treated. He was as ready to lay his hand 
upon an ultra-Puritan -as an ultra-Papist ; and his hand 
was not a pleasant one to be touched with angrily. The 
gloomy Bostonians had the mortification to see the rec- 
tor come back again, with, as they phrased it, " seven 
other devils worse than himself." The church was 
rehabilitated, services recommenced, new books, plate, 
and paraphernalia of worship brought in, the scattered 



THE PURITANS. 47 

congregation regathered and increased, and the worship 
of God by the Common Prayer set up, to grow steadily 
through two centuries, till now the Church in New Eng- 
land includes in her roll of members the name borne by 
almost every prominent Puritan in the early annals of 
the colony. While the Church stood with the Crown 
against the popular will, they hated her with that sus- 
tained and smouldering hatred of which only Puritans 
were capable. When that unholy alliance was shaken 
loose, and the Church had the chance to show what she 
is in herself, the grandsons of her enemies became her 
loving children. 

Thirty years ago a tablet of brass was set in the 
rebuilt wall of the " Founders' Chapel " of St. Botolph's 
The quarrel Church in old Boston, Lincolnshire. It bears 
ended. an inscription to the memory of John Cotton, 

the Puritan preacher of new Boston, Massachusetts. 
When the chapel was re-opened the nags of England 
and America floated together from the tower, in sign 
that the old quarrel was over and past. Tho Bishop of 
London, Laud's successor, was present, and the Bishop 
of Lincoln preached fittingly from the text, " Let us 
build with you, for we seek God as ye do." 1 

1 Thornton: The Pulpit of the Revolution, p. xxii. 



48 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 

In the early years of Elizabeth's reign the ambassador 
of his Most Catholic Majesty of Spain wrote to his master 
that the royal virgin was, in his judgment, "possessed 
of a hundred thousand devils." If this were true, it is 
likely that the task assigned to five legions of them was 
to harry the English Parliament ; the other five were 
occupied with the Puritans. When James I succeeded, 
the Romanists came to believe that a wholesale exor- 
cism had been wrought in the kingdom. It was true 
that James was more of a Protestant than Elizabeth, so 
far as theological definitions are concerned. Nothing 
would have pleased the royal theologaster better than a 
set discussion with the Pope himself ; but he differed 
radically from the leonine queen in temper. He would 
argue with the Romanists by the week, but he would 
net cut their heads off. By Elizabeth's method argu- 
ment is quickly ended, by James's it may be continued. 

This being the king's disposition, when George Cal- 
vert, one of his state officers, became a pervert to 
Lord Baiti- Romanism in 1624, he did not thereby forfeit 
more. ^ e rova i favor. He was made Lord Balti- 

more in lieu of the honorable offices this step compelled 
him to relinquish. But he thereby cast his lot with a 
people who had been, upon the whole, fairly judged, and 



THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 49 

lay under the popular verdict of bad Christians and 
untrustworthy Englishmen. For this cause the rights 
of citizenship had been taken away from them. They 
held their fortunes and lives by sufferance, and both 
were often in jeopardy. Calvert made himself inti- 
mately acquainted with their situation. His connection 
by marriage with Sir Thomas Arundel, their chief ad- 
viser, gave him opportunity to know their needs and 
wishes. He was already one of the original members of 
the Virginia Council. This fact probably suggested his 
scheme to him. The Puritans had their colony, why 
should not the Romanists have theirs? They could 
there escape the social and political disabilities which 
their fathers had brought upon them, and maybe add a 
new jewel to the much-battered tiara. In any case, in 
the New World the priest would not be compelled to 
disguise himself in Hodge's smock-frock or the livery of 
a footman, and the people to hear mass with guarded 
doors, and in deadly fear of the hangman's knife. 

Thus Maryland, like the other earliest colonies, 
The Maryland started with a distinctly religious motive. It 
colony. was t be a refuge and a seed-plot for Eng- 

lish Roman Catholics. 

For this purpose, openly avowed, Lord Baltimore 
received from Charles I a patent for the territory lying 
between the mouth of the Potomac and the fortieth 
degree of north latitude, and running westward indefi- 
nitely. 1 Before the charter received the imprint of the 
Great Seal, Baltimore died. Leonard Calvert, his son, 
took up his father's task. Romish noblemen and gentle- 

1 Sh»a: Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 34. 



50 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

men furnished the outfit, and their humbler followers 
became the colonists. Two ships, the Ark and the Dova, 
bore the company of a hundred people. They were the 
best equipped and furnished of all the early companies. 
They sailed from Cowes, November 22, 1633. After 
a long and stormy voyage, in which they were driven 
by stress of weather to the Barbadoes and Montserrat, 
they entered the mouth of the Potomac, which they 
consecrated to St. Gregory, and rechristened the two 
capes which clip its mouth Cape St. Gregory and Cape 
St. Michael. The islands they sailed by, they called St. 
Clement, St. Catherine, and St. Cecilia. On this last 
they landed, and the two Jesuits sent by their provin- 
cial with the expedition, Father Andrew White and 
Father John Altham, said mass for the company on 
Annunciation Day, 1634. Thence they moved to the 
Maryland shore, and unloaded their goods at St. Mary's. 
"There," says Bancroft, "religious liberty obtained a 
home, its only home in the wide world." 

This last declaration has been so often made, that in 
the interest of common justice it should be qualified and 

supplemented. Things which differ ought 
Romanists . . . r 

andreii- to be distinguished. That Roman Catho- 

er y# lies should be claimed as the champions of 
religious liberty in the seventeenth century, seems suffi- 
ciently grotesque to the student of history. 1 The 
simple truth in the premises is this : the Calverts did 
believe and practise so ; the Roman Church did neither 
the one nor the other. The settlers of Maryland were 

1 This claim was the burden of the addresses at the Roman Catholic 
Conference at Baltimore in October, 1889. 



THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 51 

too glad to find safety to think of persecution. Not 
that they would have done so if they could. They 
should have, ungrudged, their meed of praise ; but 
they must not have all the praise. It must not be for- 
gotten that their new home was given them by a Prot- 
estant king, with the hearty advice and approval of a 
Protestant council, who in so doing waived their own 
claims in the interest of their misguided but still loved 
countrymen. They made the gift with their eyes open. 
English Romanists were utterly discredited as citizens. 
It was not alone or chiefly that their religion was abhor- 
rent. By their own declaration they took their political 
orders from an enemy whom England could not then 
afford to despise. Romanists in England meant serv- 
ants of the Papacy and agents of the king of Spain. 
Despite of this, Protestant Englishmen gave them that 
peaceful home in Maryland, which had already been 
brutally refused them by their French co-religionists in 
Newfoundland. 1 The founders were of those few in 
their day who were Catholics rather than Romanists, 
and Englishmen before either. Such were the Cal- 
verts, a noble race with few contemporaries and fewer 
descendants. They had neither the will nor the power 
of intolerance. But they laid no claim to toleration as 

a virtue. They simply recognized existing 
by them im- f acts. The first offer of persecution by the 

Mar}dand colony would have brought such a 
storm about them as would have swept them into the 
ocean. Churchmen and Quakers, Baptists and Puritans, 
would have combined to exterminate the ingrates. 

1 Shea : Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 32. 



52 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

They were glad to leave England, and there is serious 
reason to believe that they were not altogether sorry 
to be three thousand miles farther away from Rome. 
Their chosen priests were Jesuits, and the Society of 
Jesus was not then in favor at Rome. It had already 
launched upon that policy of adaptability to every 
circumstance, which made it distrusted and finally 
led to its suppression by the Pope himself. Domini- 
cans, Capuchins, and Franciscans were those whom 
Rome then looked upon with favor. The judgment 
of the Roman Church was at one with that of the 
Puritan upon this question. Cotton Mather spoke for 
both when he pronounced " toleration — a doctrine of 
devils." The Calverts and their friends were as far 
removed from the spirit of their Church as from that 
of their times. They were never looked upon kindly 
by their spiritual superiors, and when the last of them 
returned to England the Romish King, James II, 
refused to receive him. 1 

This colony, with its exceptional advantages of equip- 
ment, soil, and climate, filled up more slowly than any of 
Slow growth ^ s compeers. At first the immigrants were 
of th3 colony. c f the same faith as the founders. But this 
supply of men was quickly exhausted. The truth was, 
there were few of that sort among the English-speak- 
ing people to draw from. The stream of immigration 
soon became Protestant. Before a generation had 
passed, these last were in the majority ; before the end 
of the century they were ten to one. 2 While there 

1 Hawks: Ecclesiastical Contributions, vol. ii. p. 56. 

2 lb. p. 73; Shea, p. 26. 



THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 53 

was no religious establishment, the offices of the prov- 
ince were all rigidly kept in the hands of Roman Cath- 
olics, and this even after they had become less than 
one-tenth of the population. No open obstacle was 
placed in the way of Protestant worship, but any offi- 
cial advantage available was lent to that of Rome. 
Occasional services of the Church of England were held 
almost from the first, by clergy from Virginia, from 
New England, and by occasional visitors from England. 
In a few places services were kept up with regularity 
for considerable periods, but the record of them in 
detail is not now extant. 

In Cromwell's time the Commonwealth sent over a 
commission to set up the " New Model," and Roman- 
ists and Churchmen were both suppressed. 

At the Restoration things returned to the same state 
as before. 

Ten years later the Roman Catholic population had 
been engulfed. 1 The Italian plant in America had 
withered, and did not revive again, till the stream of 
Irish immigration poured over it in the middle of this 
present century. 

When this condition had been reached, the people of 
Maryland effected, rightly, the "Protestant Revolution." 
A petition to the Crown was offered praying that the 
offices of the province might be placed in the hands of 
Protestants, who constituted its people. It was right 
and just, on the Calverts' own principles, that this should 
be done. Nor did their descendants and successors 
strongly oppose it. 

1 Shea, p. 75. 



54 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

The first clear view of the Church's career there 
begins in 1675. A Mr. Yeo, of Patuxent, writes to 
the Archbishop of Canterbury, — 

" The Province of Maryland is in a deplorable state 
for want of an established ministry. Here are ten or 
twelve counties, and in them at least twenty thousand 
souls, and but three Protestant ministers of the Church 
of England. The Lord's Day is profaned, religion is 
despised, and all the notorious vices are committed, so 
that it is become a Sodom of uncleanness and a pest of 
iniquity." 

The picture drawn by Mr. Yeo is probably too deeply 
colored, but there is abundant testimony that that pesti- 
"BadCath- ^ en ^ class had multiplied rapidly which has 
ohcs." since become the bane of the United States. 

" Bad Catholics " have always been the worst of the 
population, — while good ones have been as good as any. 
The only authority which they have been reared to 
recognize as really binding is the Church. When they 
or their children break away or lapse from under it, 
there is nothing to take its place. The intrinsically 
divine quality of civil government, which has always 
been one of the underlying beliefs of Protestantism, is 
unknown by them. In their eagerness to accent the 
divine nature of the Church, they have emptied every- 
thing else of its divinity. "When they break with it 
they are left wandering stars. In the present day they 
form a great proportion of the inmates of jails and peni- 
tentiaries. In the last years of the seventeenth century 
they were at large in Maryland. The Roman Catholic 
Church had almost completely lost its hold on its own 



THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 55 

children. It was not for a hundred years later that 
they were able to support their first bishop. When 
Madison went to England for consecration, John Car- 
roll, the Roman Catholic, was his shipmate on his way 
to accomplish a similar errand. 

The lapsed Romanists were mingled with lapsed 
Churchmen, Quakers destitute of the "inner light," 
Baptists, and a few Scotch Presbyterians. They were 
practically all planters. The evil effect of African 
slavery upon the masters was beginning to show itself. 
They were overbearing, indolent, and licentious, — the 
three besetting sins of slave-keeping people. Dancing, 
drinking, horse-racing, cock-fighting, were their serious 
occupations. 1 Their charter was revoked in 1690, like 
those of Massachusetts and New York, in pursuance 
Charter re- °^ tne nome policy which had determined to 
voked. bring the colonial territory out of its anoma- 

lous political status, and restore it to its place as a part 
of the common possessions of the kingdom. By this act 
of the Crown, — not the colonists themselves, — the ec- 
clesiastical balance was overturned. The people came 
back under English law. By that law the Romanist as. 
such was proscribed. His very existence became trea- 
son. By the same law the English Church was part of 
the machinery of the realm. It needed no new statute 
for either. The existing laws sufficed. The Church of 
England was now the established Church of Maryland. 
Clergy began to come apace, but of a character and qual- 
ity so indifferent that their presence wrought, if possible, 

1 Lodge: English Colonies in America, p. 127 et seq. 

1 McMastcr: History of People of United States, vol. i. pp 424, 425. 



56 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

more harm than their previous absence had done. It is 
evil for a people to have no priests ; it is still worse to 
have bad ones. The first Maryland priest we catch sight 
Unworthy °f ^ s °f this sort. John Coode, a politician, 
ministers. a mountebank, a land-surveyor, a Jack-of-all- 
trades, had been mixed up with all the broils of the 
colony, was always to be found at his post after the 
fight, when the spoil was being gathered. He had been 
most forward in the petition to have the colonial offices 
turned over to Protestants, and had secured two or 
three of them for his share. The duties of one of them 
called him to England. While there he managed to 
have himself ordained to the ministry. Upon his 
return he began at once to officiate. It can readily be 
imagined how much good he did. His character grew 
from bad to worse. Without giving up either his sacred 
or secular office he added to them both that of customs 
officer. At odd times he surveyed a plantation and 
bowsed all the evening with the owner. He was so 
drunk once during service on Sunday that Governor 
Nicholson, who was in the congregation, led him out 
and caned him handsomely, — and was challenged by 
him for the indignity. He went up and down the 
colony preaching on Sunday, and lecturing during the 
week, on " The Absurdities of Christianity," — a sort 
of seventeenth-century Ingersoll in spurs and cassock. 
Finally his conduct became so intolerable that he was 
arrested, tried for general misbehavior, and banished 
from the colony. 

It must not be supposed that all the priesthood Avere 
such as this, the first we meet. The earliest missionaries 



THE ROMAN CATHOLICS. 57 

had been devout and godly men, and some such still 
remained. But for the most part they had passed away. 
Noav that plantation life had grown easy, and a ready 
fortune was to be gathered, and the people themselves 
had declined in manners, so many of Coode's sort came 
that we shall find ministerial unworthiness to be a pain- 
ful feature of the Church for more than a generation, — 
indeed, in the Southern colonies, quite up to the Revo- 
lution. 

When the year 1700 had been reached, the position of 
the Church in the province of the Calverts was, roughly, 
Situation this. There were about twenty-two thousand 
in 1700. inhabitants, nine-tenths of them nominally 

Protestants, a turbulent and ill-regulated populace. 
The Church of England was established by law. A 
poll-tax of forty pounds of tobacco was assessed for 
its support upon every rate-payer. There were about 
half a dozen clergy. The people were in many places 
anxious both for more and better ones. They forwarded 
petitions to the Bishop of London and Canterbury fre- 
quently to this end. A curious fact is that the signers 
of these petitions constantly called themselves " Protest- 
ant-Catholics." Did they anticipate by two centuries 
a true conception of the Church ? Were the two classes 
so fused together in the common population that they 
simply described themselves ? 

The Establishment was most unpopular, even in 
the eyes of the stanchest Churchmen. The tax of 
tobacco was evaded, or else paid in an herb of so poor 
a quality that even Parson Samson raised his gorge 
at it. 



58 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

The ecclesiastical history of the colony has been well 
summed up in the words of a modern writer : 

" There were three eras of toleration in Maryland. 
That of the proprietaries, which lasted fifty years. 
Under it all believers in Christ were (theoretically) 
equal before the law, and all support to churches and 
ministers was voluntary. 

"That of the Puritans, which lasted six years, and in- 
cluded all but Romanists, Episcopalians, and heretics. 

" The Anglican toleration, which lasted eighty years, 
had glebes and churches for the Establishment, conniv- 
ance for Dissenters, penal laws for Catholics, and from 
all the forty pounds per poll" 1 

1 American Commonwealth Series, Maryland, p. 186. 



THE DUTCH. 59 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DUTCH. 

The early settlements were established, one after the 
other, on the banks of Albemarle Sound, Chesapeake, 
Massachusetts, New York, and Delaware Bays. To the 
three first and the last the colonists came impelled either 
entirely or dominantly by religious motives, and all came 
from England. The. New York settlement sprang from 
religious motives only indirectly. Remotely, the Refor- 
mation was its occasion. That had divided Europe into 
two hostile camps. For half a century they strove to 
settle on the field that quarrel between the Pope and 
the Augustinian monk, which had failed of adjustment 
by argument. Slowly the war concentrated itself into 
the Netherlands, the historic battle-ground of Europe. 
In that arena Rome broke herself against the indomi- 
table Dutch. But these could strike, as well as endure. 
While they stubbornly defended themselves at home, 
they aimed a blow at their Spanish enemy's remotest 
border. The English skipper, Henry Hudson, with a 
Seeking the sturdy Dutch crew in the ship Half Moon, 
East indies. was sen ^ ^ rava g e the Spanish possessions 
in the Farther Indies. In September, 1609, they passed 
inside Sandy Hook, and fancied they might before even- 
ing drop their anchor in front of Singapore. 1 The great 

1 Parkman: Discovery of the Great West, p. xxi. 



60 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

river they were in, and the Straits of Malacca, to their 
minds, covered the same space upon the map. An un- 
suspected continent and an unknown ocean lay between 
them and their purpose. Their voyage of war became 
changed perforce to one of discovery and adventure ; for 
trading with Indians would be quite as profitable as 
fighting with Lascars. Bears and wolverines were plenty 
on either side of Hudson's River, mink and otter abun- 
dant along the Sound, and muskrats. swarmed about the 
Haarlem flats. Barter with the natives was easy, and 
Hudson's crew went home both earlier and richer than 
they had expected. Their report soon led to other ex- 
peditions for the same purpose. A fort and a cluster of 
cabins sprang up on Manhattan Island. In 1619 the 
United Provinces gained their hard-won independence. 
Immediately there sprang up among them the same 
movement of adventure and colonization which had 
shown itself among the English upon their peace 
with Spain. The " Dutch West India Company" 
was organized. The United Provinces gave it leave 
to found a state in America. Leave was all they 
gave it. They warned the colonists that they went 
on their own responsibility, and took their own risk. 
They must "look to the Provinces for nothing but 
friendly patronage." In 1625 the advance guard of 
thirty families came. For twenty-four dollars they 
bought Manhattan Island for their own, and began 
at once to build their town about the block-house of 
the fur-traders. 

It is their ecclesiastical future with which we have 
to do. After two centuries and a half shall have passed 



THE DUTCH. 61 

over, we will find the names borne by these Dutch 

, immigrants in the Church, — Stuy vesants, De 
Ecclesiastical & J 

position of Peysters, Livingstons, Schuylers, Bleeckers, 
and Remsens. By what steps, and through 
what influences, have they come ? 

They came here Presbyterians, but Presbyterians of 
a very different type, and with other traditions, than 
those we shall find across the Church's path later on. 
In their long war with the Papacy their bishops had 
taken sides against them. When the Episcopate runs 
away, only the Presbyterate is left. The Dutchmen's 
theory of the Presbytery came after the fact. In such 
a case the theory is not held aggressively. Their the- 
ology was not of the fierce Calvinistic sort. It was 
broader, more kindly, and more human. The "Church 
idea " has never been wanting in them or their descend- 
ants. They had become Presbyterian from necessity, 
and continued to be so from wont and use rather than 
from conscience. Five years after their town of New 
Amsterdam was started, their first minister came out. 
The Dutch Fifty communicants and more greeted him. 
as settlers. The colony grew rapidly. Soon the island 
was too strait for them, and they pushed out to search 
new places. They ascended the Hudson, and followed 
the Mohawk till its branches interlaced with the Sus- 
quehanna. Adrian Block passed through the Sound, 
and left his name on Block Island. Captain May fol- 
lowed the Jersey coast till he reached the cape which 
bears his name. They plodded eastward until they con- 
fronted the Puritans on the Housatonic. This was a 
significant meeting. It was the old problem in physics 



62 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

of an irresistible body meeting an immovable one. It 
was followed by a whole generation of contest, some- 
times by words, then by threats, and even by blows, 
Koger Williams came all the way from Providence to 
arbitrate between them, and gained the ill-will of 
both. 

The Dutch had learned religious toleration in a hard 

school, and had learned their lesson well. In New York 

alone, of all the colonies, absolute religious 

Toleration- . _, ° . 

liberty subsisted from the start. Even in 
Perm's colony no " Jew, Turk, Infidel, or heretic " might 
live. New York gave a home to everything that is 
human. There the Jew first set foot in America. 
Lutherans, Puritans, Presbyterians, Huguenots, and 
Quakers dwelt undisturbed. Even when choleric old 
Peter Stuyvesant harried the Quakers and Lutherans, 
it was to satisfy a personal grudge, and his conduct 
was not sustained by the people. Dutch, French, and 
English were spoken, each by so many that public 
documents required to be in all three tongues. 

But this prosperous Dutch colony was occupying 
British soil, and now their place was wanted. They 
had come without leave asked, and had been warned by 
their own government, in advance, not to look to it 
for help. The mouth of the Hudson was within the 
Virginia Company's grant. That company had resigned 
to the Crown what was needed for Massachusetts and 
Maryland, but not for New Netherlands. It was now 
wanted for the King's brother, the Duke of York. The 
Dutch were warned to vacate, but placidly sat still. 
On the 8th of September, 1664, the Duke's fleet, with 



THE DUTCH. 63 

Colonel Nichols, dropped anchor off the island. Stout 
Peter Stuyvesant, then governor, stormed in vain. The 
Dutch would not fight, neither would they run away. 
They went about their work serenely. Their governor 
ungraciously capitulated for them, stipulating that " the 
Dutch shall enjoy liberty of conscience here in divine 
worship and church discipline." x 

Colonel Nichols landed with his staff and his chap- 
lain, bringing the English flag and the English Church. 
Their coming did not strikingly change the 
the English ecclesiastical situation. Colonel Nichols was 
himself a Churchman, but of a mild type. 
He made no attempt at propagandise. His own chap- 
lain read prayers and preached in the little log chapel of 
Fort James alternately with the Dutch dominie, and, 
later on, the Roman Catholic priest. For thirty years 
this indifference continued. The Dutch had their meet- 
ing-houses ; the Huguenots had their chapel ; the Bap- 
tists had theirs ; and the Quakers met from house to 
house ; but the Church's voice was not heard beyond the 
garrison's drum-beat. When Governor Andros came 
the situation changed. His truculent Churchmanship 
asserted itself here as it had done in Boston. He found, 
however, that the Dutch were more difficult to deal 
with than even the Puritans. They would not actively 
oppose his projects, much less fly into a religious fury, 
but their stolid inertia baffled even the domineering 
governor. He passed away soon to another province, 
leaving the Church circumscribed as narrowly as it had 
been before he came, but bearing now the burden of 
popular dislike which he had created. 

1 CaDitulaticn: Article viii. 



64 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

It was not till 1690, after the Dutch Stadtholdei 
had become the English King, that the Church began 
to grow. The change of dynasty had its effect. The 
Dutch in New York no longer deemed themselves for- 
eigners. The King spoke their tongue far better than 
he did English. He was a member of their Church as 
well as an Episcopalian. If their beloved Prince of 
Orange found it easy to be a Churchman, why should 
not they do likewise ? Even if they did not become 
so formally, their feeling toward the Church became 
greatly modified. The only thing they boggled at was 
giving up their beloved Dutch tongue. They stood out 
against this, but in vain. The young people under- 
stood English, and grew to dislike their fathers' speech. 
The}^ clamored for English in their services. When 
the elder people refused to allow it, the younger turned 
to the Church. 

In 1692 Governor Fletcher persuaded the Assembly 
to pass an " Act to make provision for the ministry in 
Churches- every county." It districted the province 
tabiishment. [ n i parishes, provided for an assessment to 
sustain public worship, and put it within the governor's 
right to nominate "a worthy Protestant minister" in 
each. It is clear that the Assembly used the term 
" Protestant minister " in its widest sense. They were 
themselves almost all Dutch Presbyterians. But the 
governor declared that he was constrained to interpret 
the Act in accordance with the law of the realm. 
Wherever that law met the phrase " Protestant minis* 
ter," it understood by it a minister of the Established 
Church. If the Assembly meant something else, they 



THE DUTCH. 65 

should have said what they meant. They had used the 
legal phraseology, and by it they had unintentionally 
established the Church of England in New York ! He 
would nominate none but Churchmen to the parishes, 
and the tax must be expended for them. It seems at 
this distance like sharp practice. In Massachusetts it 
would have brought such a storm about the governor's 
ears as would have swept him off the coast. But the 
Dutch do not seem to have very seriously resented it. 
The truth was, it was rather a barren victory for the 
Church. The Assembly had the machinery for taxation 
in their own hands, and they would not be likely to set 
it going under the circumstances. The governor nom- 
inated a rector or two in Long Island, but no salary 
was forthcoming, and the appointees could not live in 
these parishes. But the Act, and the governor's inter- 
pretation of it, placed the Church legally in possession. 
It fenced all others out. 

When the English-speaking Presbyterians, immedi- 
ately afterward, organized their first society, they found 
they could not take title to the land where they wished 
to build their church. But the General Assembly of 
the (Established) Presbyterian Church of Scotland came 
to their relief. A committee of that body, a corpora- 
tion known to the laws of the realm, held their title for 
them, and they went on with their building. 

While the Presbyterians were thus trying to start 
Plan for the their society, and the phlegmatic Dutch were 
Episcopate, seemingly indifferent to the whole matter, 
the Rev. Mr. Miller, the chaplain of the fort, elaborated 
a scheme for the Church's good, which, if it had been 



6b THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

carried out, would have changed the future ecclesiastical 
history of America. His plan was to have a Bishop 
sent out. He proposed that the Bishop of London 
should consecrate a suffragan for New York. There 
was nothing to hinder. The province was a Crown 
colony. The Church was now established. The Bishop 
of London was its Ordinary. He could not look after 
it himself. Why not appoint a suffragan ? Miller's 
plan was, as he states, "to use the King's Farm, at 
present a very ordinary thing, yet will admit of consid- 
erable improvement," for the Bishop's seat ; that a sub- 
scription be started to put the farm in order, and to 
build a Bishop's Church ; that the large sums of money 
now raised in England for missionary purposes be ad- 
ministered by the Bishop of New York ; that " five or 
six sober young ministers be brought over with Bibles 
and Prayer-Books and other things convenient for 
Churches, so that the Bishop with these powers, quali- 
fications, and supplies, would in a short time, through 
God's assistance, be able to make great progress in the 
settlement, and in the correction of vice." The plan 
was in every way feasible, and is almost the only one of 
all the plans for the Episcopate which was so. At this 
time there would have been no difficulty in the way. 
The Dutch would not have opposed it, and it is hardly 
too much to say that they would have welcomed it. 
Twenty-five years later it would have been impossible 
in any of the colonies. By that time the idea of an 
ultimate separation from the mother country had found 
a lodgement. No institution not already here, which 
might se^m to knit the bonds more tightly, would be 



THE DUTCH. 67 

tolerated. In 1695 this was not the case. Loj^alty was 
then universal, and dissent was only in its second gener- 
ation. It had not gained the strength of prescription . 
What really did stand in the way of this and every 
other attempt to secure the Episcopate here was the 
extensive and minute ignorance which obtained among 
English Churchmen concerning colonial affairs. The 
idea of a Bishop in the American wilderness was as 
grotesque to them as now would be the suggestion of a 
professor of the higher mathematics among the Zulus. 
It was not till fifty years later that Berkeley saw the 
star of empire westward take its way. And vision a3 
clear as his was just about as common as seers always 
are. Poor Chaplain Miller's well-digested plan was 
not even considered. It was not possible a second 
time for a whole century. 

Meanwhile the Church people of New York drew 
together and organized Trinity Parish in 1697. The 
Trinity Church made all the freeholders of the town 

Church. electors to choose wardens and vestrymen ; 

made the Bishop of London rector at a salary of one 
hundred pounds a year ; the salary was to be raised by 
assessment upon real estate ; the new church was to be, 
as the royal representative phrased it, "our sole and 
only parish church and churchyard in this our said City 
of New York." 

The Church was built, and is described as "stand- 
ing very pleasantly on the banks of Hudson River, 
and has a large cemetery on each side, and is enclosed 
in front by a painted paled fence. Its revenue is 
restricted by Act of Assembly to five hundred pounds, 



68 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

but it is possessed of a farm at the north end of 
the city, which is lately rented, and will in the course 
of a few years, it is hoped, produce a considerable 
income." 

The hope seems to have been well founded. 



THE SOUTH RIVER. 69 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE SOUTH RIVER. 

The Hudson was the " North River, " the Dela- 
ware the " South River." To find the colonists for 
this last, we must cross to the continent as we did 
for the Hudson. We will bring settlers of a foreign 
speech, but of a church akin to the English. 

When the great Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, 
laid down his life on the field of Lutzen, his great chan- 
cellor, Oxenstiern, took up his master's task 
The Swedes. 

as best he might. He cast about to find 

where his reformed Swedes might be safe from their 
ancient enemy. Like the other leaders of his time, his 
thoughts turned to America. Under the chancellor's 
patronage, Peter Minuit organized his little colony, and 
landed with them at Wilmington, 1637. They were 
Lutheran Episcopalians. Sweden had been fortunate 
enough to come out of the storm of her reformation 
with her Hierarch}^ standing ; somewhat damaged, to be 
sure, but sufficiently secure to gain recognition. The 
Minister who came with the Swedish colony, and his 
brethren who followed him, had all been episcopally 
ordained. They had a history, a liturgy, a church life. 
When they came in contact with the English Church 
at Philadelphia and Wilmington, they coalesced with it 



70 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

without any questions asked on either hand. 1 But they 
did not meet with friendly Englishmen. Their nearest 
neighbors were the Dutch on the Hudson and in the 
Jerseys. These were a sturdy, thrifty people, who 
knew good land when they saw it. They had no no- 
tion of allowing the Swedes to intrude. That they 
themselves had no rights, did not affect the question. 
They had possession. Frequent expeditions were sent 
out from New Amsterdam to drive the Swedes away 
from the Delaware. These expeditions were badly 
managed, and in fact the old soldiers of Gustavus were 
more than a match for the far-traders of the Hudson. 
They held their own and increased until sturdy Peter 
Stuyvesant undertook the task of conquest. But the 
Dutch victory was short-lived. Hardly had Stuyvesant 
returned victorious when Colonel Nichols with the Eng- 
lish fleet appeared in the East River, and the Dutch and 
Swedes both lost their titles. New Netherlands and 
New Sweden both passed back without a 

Absorption x 

bythaEng- struggle under the British crown. A few 
recruits continued to come to the lower 
counties, but not enough to leave permanently any 
trace of their speech, their church, or their habits, in 
the New World. Their few parishes, at Philadelphia, 
Wilmington, and Chester, passed gradually into the 
Church of England, and were absorbed. Two or three 
quaint old churches, always known locally as the u 01d 
Swedes," are all that survive. A hundred and fifty 
years later the Swedish Episcopacy came in sight 

1 Perry : History of the American Episcopal Churcb, vol. i. p. 229. 
Perry : Historical Collections: vol, Pennsylvania, p. 432. 



THE SOUTH RIVER. 71 

again, in connection with the visit of America's first 
Bishops to England for consecration, but by that time 
the two churches, once neighbors, and well acquainted, 
had drifted so far apart that the Swedes' offer of the 
bishopric was hardly considered. 1 

The real settlers of the Delaware were preparing 
in another quarter. In 1640, George Fox, the son of 
a Leicestershire weaver, was herding sheep 
for a neighboring farmer. In his solitude he 
dreamed dreams and saw visions. It was an age of the 
fiercest theological controversy. For three generations 
Englishmen had thought and spoken of hardly any- 
thing else. All social, political, economical questions 
were religious ones at bottom. The common people 
were, and had long been, perplexed and ill at ease. The 
religious atmosphere was stormy. Men had lost their 
leaders. In the old days the yokel had not disturbed 
himself about his soul. That was the priest's business ; 
he was paid for it. But now everything was changed. 
The old priests were gone, and the new ones were 
somewhat puzzling. They would give absolution — at 
a pinch — but they would not warrant it. They would 
hear confessions, but the penances they imposed were 
of a new-fangled kind, involving doctrines and experi- 
ences which were strange. At church the common 
man did not know very well how to behave. In one 
parish he seemed to see the old mass, in another he 
heard a preacher hold forth in language not clearly 
intelligible. He heard his neighbors discussing theology 
continually. Every man had a psalm or a doctrine. 

1 Beardsley : Life of Seabury. 



72 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

Salvation was no longer the simple thing it had once 
seemed to be. It conld no longer be bought, delivered, 
and paid for, as it could in the good old days of the 
grandfathers. What the common people craved was 
a simple, portable evangel ; something which was not 
mixed up with Spanish marriages, logical tourna- 
ments, abstruse doctrines, political policies. Who- 
ever would discover such would be accounted a 
benefactor. 

Fox turned his dreamy eyes within, and found God. 
The Spirit of God bearing witness with his spirit, — that 
was the substance of religion. To find the truth, one 
needs only to commune with his own heart and be still. 
This " Inner Light " was not only the final but the sole 
guide which it is safe to follow. It is the simplest of 
all ideas. It at a single stroke renders superfluous all 
Jie machinery of the Church. Why turn to doctor or 
council, to priest or preacher, if one can look within 
and see the Holy Ghost? He needed not to be in- 
structed of any man. 

It was natural that Fox's idea should be caught up. 

Indeed, it was in the air already, and had been for half 

a century. The Mystics, Mennonites, Ana- 
Quakerism. . J J 

baptists, Baptists, and " Fifth Monarchy " 

men in England had all held by it. But it was Fox's 

strength that he set out the idea in its naked simplicity. 

All before him had entangled it with questions of social 

freedom, ecclesiastical organization, fantastic ritual, and 

what not. Fox held it up in its sheer nakedness. The 

common people seized upon it as hungry men do bread. 

It swept over England like a craze. The lanes and 



THE SOUTH RIVER. 73 

hedges were filled with the preachers of the New Light. 
They declared that when the light shone within them 
they did "exceedingly fear and quake," — and the 
ribald dubbed them " Quakers," at their word. At first 
they were merely religious enthusiasts, but they quickly 
became something more. One begins by breaking loose 
from religious ordinances ; it is but a step farther to find 
one's self beyond the regulations of the State and the 
family, They became fanatics of a very dangerous sort. 
All the powers of society were trained upon them to 
put them down. There seemed good reason for their 
suppression. Only two generations earlier the Bund- 
schuh had waded in blood through Germany. The 
peasants' uprising in Elizabeth's day was not forgot- 
ten. These Quakers appeared to be setting out on the 
same path. Those others had also begun by claiming a 
Divine illumination, and had ended in lust, violence, 
and cruelty. The magistrates, the priests, the nobility, 
and the citizens joined hands for their extermination. 
Then persecution drove them mad. Under its stress 
they passed into that riotous phase which it is difficult 
to associate mentally with the restrained, russet-clad folk 
whom we know by their name. They were impelled by 
Extrava- a consumin g fi re - They " bore their testi- 
ganca and mony " up and down the earth. One of 

rapression. 

them bearded the Grand Turk to his face : 
another tore his cap to rags before Cromwell as a testi- 
mony against him. They visited Scotland and Ireland, 
the West India Islands, and the North American Colo- 
nies ; they were imprisoned by the Inquisitor at Malta ; 
one brother visited Jerusalem and bore his testimony 



71 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

against the superstition of the monks. 1 Naked women^ 
smeared with soot and filth, stalked about the streets 
and into English churches and New England meeting- 
houses. They throve upon persecution. They fairly 
broke into gaol and clamored to be hanged. The crim- 
inal law at the time was brutal at the best. Leprous 
gaols, in which the prisoner was left to starve, the stocks, 
the pillory, the lash at the cart's tail, the hangman with 
his searing iron and quartering knife, stood round about 
the violator of the law or the disturber of the peace. 
The Quaker was both, and he looked upon the pains 
which confronted him, not merely serenely but with 
exalted joy. What could be done with such men? 

Efforts to ^e l aw °^ everv l an d m Christendom was 
suppress the against them. But these laws could not be 
enforced effectively without a sustained sav- 
agery of which Anglo-Saxons have more than once 
shown themselves to be incapable. The attempt was 
made. Five thousand of them were in gaol at once. 2 
They were threatened, mobbed, pelted, ducked, fined, 
imprisoned, banished, their ears were cropped, they were 
laid in the stocks, whipped from market town to market 
town, shut up in mad-houses, and finally hanged. In the 
end the persecution gradually ceased, and the Quakers' 
ill-regulated enthusiasm exhausted itself. But by this 
time they had become a 'marked people. They had 
begun by ignoring the constant fact that religion as a 
spirit cannot subsist disembodied. They had turned 

1 Rev. Henry Ferguson: in Church Review, January, 1889. (A 
most admirable article upon the Quaker episode in New England.) 
- Rowntre*: Quakers, Past and Present, p. 72. 



THE SOUTH RIVER. 75 

their backs upon the sacraments of Christ's appoint- 
ment, and this violation of a law of God, which is also 
a law of human nature, revenged itself upon them by 
compelling them to elevate into sacraments a certain 
whimsical misuse of pronouns and a fantastic dress. 
They had also learned self-control. The Spirit no 
longer possessed them ; they possessed it. They be- 
came the same self-contained, prudent, negatively good 
folk their few surviving descendants still are. They 
had earned and compelled that curious, half-contempt- 
uous good-will which is still accorded to them. 

Like all classes who were uncomfortable in Europe, 
they began to look to America. In 1673, Fox came 
Quakers in himself to spy out the land. He made an 
New Jersey, extended tour of observation from Maine to 
South Carolina. In every colony, after he left Massa- 
chusetts, he found people who looked upon him as one 
sent of God. Some 01 them were refugees from England 
and the Barbadoes, and some were sporadic. After going 
up and down the coast, he went home and organized a 
colony of Friends, whose agents bought for them, for five 
thousand dollars, the western half of Southern Jersey. 
In 1675 the ship Griffith brought them out and landed 
them at Salem. To this new settlement Quakers flocked 
by scores and hundreds. They were left to organize 
the colony after their own fashion. Religious liberty 
was its corner-stone. They would persecute no man, 
they would not even defend themselves. " There," in 
Bancroft's words, " in 1681, met the first legislative 
assembly in the world, who said thee and thou to all 
men, and wore their hats in presence of beggar and 



TO THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

king." Their little colony of Salem remained thriving 
quietly and developing its own peculiar life until it was 
brought into touch with the rest of the world by the 
coming of a larger immigration of the same folk 
under a leader whose name has become known on two 
continents. 

William Penn is one of the most striking and pictur- 
esque figures in history. His father was a choleric Eng- 
lish admiral, and his mother a gentle German 
' mystic. When their son was a lad of sixteen, 
a student at Oxford, he chanced to hear the wandering 
Quaker preacher Loe, and saw the " Inner Light." His 
tutors and spiritual pastors and masters labored in vain 
to withdraw him from the sect with which he cast in his 
lot, but the enthusiasm was in his blood from his mother. 
When they could not prevail, they sent him home to his 
father. The admiral stormed at him, coaxed him, rea- 
soned with him, beat him, but the gentle lad stood firm. 
Then his father sent him abroad, thinking that change 
of scene would cure him. He furnished him with let- 
ters to the gayest and most fashionable people, thinking 
to distract him. Penn went to the Continent a dream- 
ing Quaker lad, and returned an accomplished Quaker 
gentleman. He lived long at the French court, and 
learned manners in the society to which his renowned 
father's letters gained him admission. He studied at a 
Swiss university, and learned the theology of Calvin. 
He lived with the Mennonites on the Rhine, and found 
them of his spiritual kin. He returned to England a 
courtier, a theologian, a philosopher, the master of three 
living languages and two dead ones, a graceful leader 



THE SOUTH RIVER. 77 

of the minuet, the most expert small-swordsman in 
Europe, and a Quaker still. He inherited his grand- 
father's great fortune, and won the friendship of the 
dissolute King. Thenceforth he devoted his life and 
wealth to the fortunes of his co-religionists, and won 
thereby, as he richly merited, both fame and wealth. A 
part of his inheritance was a claim against the Crown 
for sixteen thousand pounds. It was regarded as the 
poorest of assets, but Penn was willing to take his pay 
in that which cost the King nothing but his signature. 
In quittance of his claim he secured Pennsylvania. 
Both parties were well pleased, the King to have his 
cancelled bond, and Penn to have a new land for his 
people. In 1681 Penn brought his large and well- 
equipped colony up the Delaware, passed Salem, where 
their friends had preceded them, and began 
the settlement of Philadelphia. To his great 
good-fortune, he found his land occupied by Indians of 
a spirit similar to that of his own people. The Dela- 
wares had been harried and beaten by their fierce 
northern neighbors, the Iroquois, till they were in no 
fighting mood. His oavii good- will and fair spirit gave 
them confidence, and led to that honorable treaty under 
the elm tree on the bank of Shackamaxon Creek. 
Penn's colony was spared the chapter of privation and 
want which all the others had passed through. It was 
strong from the start, and recruits came every month. 
The " New Light " had been spreading rapidly. There 
were fifty thousand Quakers in England alone. 1 In 
Wales their meetings were springing up on every hand. 

1 Rowntree: Quakerism, Past and Present, p. 72. 



78 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

In Germany a multitude of kindred spirits had learned 
to know Penn. 1 From all these sources immigrants 
came pouring in. 

It was meant to be for all time a Quaker State, but 
the names of its founders are now to be looked for upon 
the Communicants' lists of the Church. The descend- 
ants of Penn and Jennings and Shippen, of the Welsh 
Evans and Roberts, are now Episcopalians. The sect 
ceased long ago to be a power in America. It never 
made any converts in this country. When it had re- 
ceived the last of the immigrants who had become 
Quakers over the sea, its growth ceased, and long before 
that time it had begun to lose. The reason why is 
plain. Its fundamental tenet was false. This central 
error had become incased in a setting of customs and 
forms which has survived with great tenacity, but has 
had no power of propagation. 

Why those who freed themselves from Quakerism 
should, as a rule, have come into the Church, is not at 
. , first sight so plain. It has not been the 

Quakers com- ° x 

ing to the forms or the doctrines of the Church which 
has drawn them, but its spirit. The self- 
contained righteousness of life, the distrust of enthusi- 
asm, the decency and propriety which have always been 
the Church's marks, have constituted the magnet. The 
Quaker, turned Churchman, has made a marked change 
outwardly, but it has not been accompanied by any 
wrench of the inner spirit. For this cause the gradual 
disintegration of that sect has been a constant source 
of gain to the Church. It began by a quarrel among 

1 Graham: Colonial History of United States, vol. i. p. 548. 



THE SOUTH RIVER. 79 

the Quakers themselves. The Salem colony employed 

a Scotch Presbyterian, George Keith, a graduate of the 

University of Aberdeen, in the capacity of 

Georg3 Keith. J J 

land-surveyor. It was his first acquaintance 
with the Friends. He became deeply interested in them 
and their peculiar doctrine and customs. Presently he 
saw the " Inner Light " himself, and became one of them. 
He was a valuable recruit. He was, to begin with, an 
educated man, and they had few such. He was, besides, 
a born controversialist and pamphleteer. He set. their 
vague thoughts to words. He challenged their oppo- 
nents to debate, and became their dexterous champion. 
His pamphlets and tracts were eagerly welcomed, not 
only by the Jersey Quakers, but by the more important 
society in Philadelphia. The Philadelphians invited 
him to come to them, as head master of their school. 
He quickly became their leading man, their David 
against the Philistines. But presently there began to 
be whisperings that their champion was not sound in 
the faith. He began to intimate that, while the " Inner 
Light " was necessary, it needed something besides itself. 
The " candle should have a candlestick ; " " the spirit 
must needs have a body." This heresy struck at the 
root of Fox's simple system, and the Quaker instinct 
quickly discovered the fact. A period of controversy 
within the Society ensued. Keith had many friends 
and followers, and was far more than a match for his 
opponents in argument. Finally the " Yearly Meeting " 
passed a formal condemnation upon him. He issued a 
Vindication, for the publishing of which William Brad- 
ford, printer, was sent to jail by the Quakers in their 



80 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

magisterial capacity. Keith accepted his expulsion, and 
set up a separate Meeting, where he drew a large follow- 
ing. An acrimonious controversy followed, which con- 
vulsed the settlement and arrayed friend against friend. 1 
While it raged Keith went to England upon private 
business. While there he took occasion to re-examine 
the whole question in a broader spirit, and was led to 
the Church of England, in which he took orders. We 
shall presently see him return as her first missionary. 

There was a provision in the terms of Penn's grant 
to the effect that if ever twenty people in the colony 
First Pennsyi- should petition therefor, they should have the 
vama Church. r ight to organize a Church of England parish, 
and apply to the Bishop of London for a minister. In 
1695 such a petition was circulated, signed, among 
others, by several hundred of the " Keithian Quakers," 
The Quakers raged furiously against it — (if Quakers 
can rage furiously), — and the magistrates had the at- 
torney who drew up the petition arrested, together with 
several of the signers. Their action was, however, so 
evidently without law, that nothing beyond annoyance 
and ill-will came of it. By this time the Quakers had 
boen so overslaughed by other immigration that, taking 
the whole colony together, they constituted less than 
one-third the population. Among these others the 
majority were nominally Church of England people. 
About this time services of the Church began to be 
held in Philadelphia. Neither the time nor the place 

1 The documents with which the parties assailed one another are, for 
the most part, preserved in William Bradford's Publications, in the 
Pennsylvania Historical Society's rooms, and are curious reading. 



THE SOUTH RIVER. 81 

of the first Common-Prayer worship can now be known. 
The Rev. Mr. Sewell of Maryland is the first clergyman 
who comes in sight. He visited Philadelphia from time 
to time, and held occasional services for the Church 
folk. The original place of worship is described as " a 
wooden shed, with a bell swung in the crutch of a tree 
near by." By 1700 Christ Church had been organized, 
a brick church costing six hundred pounds had been 
built, and the Rev. Thomas Clayton, the first incum- 
bent, had taken charge. The town was still strongly 
under the domination of Quakerism, but the Keithians 
were ready to come into the Church. In the first few 
years of the parish more than five hundred of them 
increase and were baptized. The growth was more rapid, 
spread. however, in the outlying settlements than it 

was at the centre. Especially did it gain ground among 
the Welsh, whose seat was west of the Schuylkill. In 
1700 there were missions planted at Radnor, Concord, 
Chester, and Perkiomen. These became the nuclei for 
the scattered Church families in the back settlements, 
and the Church grew apace in Penn's colony. 



82 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES, 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE CAJROLINAS. 

The first church in South Carolina was built the 
same year that Perm's, colony landed on the Delaware. 
The life of that colony had been feeble and turbulent. 
The Gentleman's Magazine for 1740 gives a curious 
but apocryphal account of the planting of the Church 
among the palmettos. The story is, that on Good 
Friday, 1660, two ships laden with English adven- 
turers landed at Port Royal. The company piled their 
goods on the beach, and the ships which had brought 
them sailed away home. The adventurers, ignorant 
alike of woodcraft and husbandry, when a few months 
had passed, found themselves starving. They were for- 
tunate in having a brave chaplain, Morgan Jones, a 
Welshman. In their extremity he offered, with a few 
Indians and others, to make the perilous journey in search 
Welsh. f Raleigh's colony on the Roanoke, — of 

whose destruction they were ignorant, — to gain succor 
for the rest. After many days' journey the little band 
were taken prisoners by the Tuscaroras. They were 
bound to the stake, and the savages stood about impa- 
tient to begin the torture. In his dire extremity Jones 
returned unconsciously to his mother tongue, and mut- 
tered his prayers in Welsh. To his amazement, he 
found that " the salvages did right well understand 



THE CAROLINAS. 83 

his speech." The captives' bonds were cut and they 
were respited from immediate torture, but detained as 
captives. Jones continued to teach the Indians in 
Welsh, and so gained their good-will that he and his 
companions were set free, and by some means found 
their way north. In 1680 this same Morgan Jones was 
officiating at Newtown, L.I. 1 

The real settlement of the Carolinas was not until 
1670. A company had been formed which included 
the Lord Chancellor, Shaftesbury, Albemarle, Berkeley, 
The "noble" Ashley, and Carteret. The colony which 
colony. t ] ie y sent out settled at " Charles's town." 

This was a " Crown Colony," and had no religious 
motive. It was purely commercial. Of course, as 
being an integral part of the kingdom, the Church was, 
in a certain vague way, established. But in the fierce 
struggle with nature, which is the first task of a colony, 
religious differences are not much emphasized, unless 
the company settling should have been moved by relig- 
ious motives in their migration. The character of the 
founders of this colony was not such as to lead them io 
take much interest in such questions. A few men of 
noble birth, though questionable manners, were among 
them, but the majority were adventurers and broken 
men. By the time the colony had reached a popula- 
tion of five thousand, the Bishop of London sent his 
Commissary to organize the Church. He reports : " I 
never repented of anything, my sins excepted, as my 



1 This curious belief in the identity of the Welsh and Indian tongues 
crops up repeatedly in the accounts of the early settlements, and at points 
most remote from each other. 



84 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

coming to this place. The people here are the vilest 
race of men upon the earth. They have neither honor, 
Religious honesty, nor religion, — being a perfect 
condition of hotch-potch made up of bankrupt 'pirates, 

the colony. r ■ . r . , , . 

decayed libertines, sectaries, and enthusi- 
asts of all sorts, who have transported themselves here 
from Bermudas, Jamaica, Barbadoes, New England, and 
Pennsylvania, and are the most factious and seditious 
people in the whole world. Many of those who pre- 
tend to be Churchmen are strangely crippled in their 
goings between the Church and Presbytery, and, as 
they are of large and loose principles, so they live and 
act accordingly, sometimes going openly with the Dis- 
senters, as they do now against the Church, and giving 
incredible trouble to the government and clergy." 

In the inevitable quarrel between the people and the 
proprietaries, the Church of England in South Carolina 
sided against the people, and the Presbyterians with 
them. This will account for " their crippled goings be- 
tween the Church and Presbytery." The Church gained 
ground slowly, if at all. At the outbreak of the Revo- 
lution, nearly a century later, there was only the one 
parish which had been organized in 1682. It was not 
until well along in the nineteenth century that substan- 
tial growth began. 1 At the opening of the eighteenth 
century there was in Charleston " a large and stately 
The estab- church of cypress logs, on a brick foun- 
hshment. dation, surrounded by white palisades," and 
named St. Philip's. An act of the Colonial Assembly 
of 1698 named Samuel Marshall its incumbent; ap- 

1 Graham: Colonial History of U.S., vol. i. p. 339. 



THE CAROLIXAS. 85 

propriated to him and his successors forever a salary 
of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum, to be 
raised by assessment ; and ordered that " a negro man 
and woman and four cows and calves be purchased at 
the public charge, for his use." 



86 THE ENGLISH CHUltCH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



A GENERAL SURVEY. 



We have now seen the stage set and the actors 
appear. With the single exception of Georgia the 
colonies are now all established. We have seen who 
their settlers are, whence they came, why they came, 
and how they bore themselves religiously in the early 
days. We have brought English Churchmen to the 
James, English Puritans to Massachusetts Bay, Dutch 
Presbyterians to the Hudson, English Romanists to the 
Potomac, Swedish Churchmen and English Quakers to 
the Delaware, and a congeries of English-speaking ad- 
venturers, under noble patronage, to the Carolinas. We 
have seen the diverse problems presented to the Church 
of England in the presence of peoples so unlike. In one 
place, its task was to retain its original establishment ; 
in another, to gain a foothold in the midst of a hostile 
community ; in another, to march with an equal step 
among its rivals in a free field. The end of the first 
century of its life in America will be a fitting place to 
pause and take a broad survey of its situation, to count 
its gains and losses, to observe its manner of life, 
to examine the people among whom it is to do its 
work in the years to follow, to test its spirit and its 
methods. 



A GENERAL SURVEY. 87 

The great bulk of the Church in 1700 was in Vir- 
ginia and Maryland. Forty of the less than threescore 
The year clergy scattered from Portsmouth to Charles- 
1700. ton were in these two colonies. There were 

in them two or three comfortable churches, built of im- 
ported brick. In every settlement was a church of logs, 
with puncheon floors and clapboard roof. The popula- 
tion was purely agricultural and widely scattered. To 
these little log chapels the people came, on horseback 
and in canoes, from twenty, thirty, and forty miles 
away. 1 They often left their distant plantations on the 
Saturday and spent the night with their hospitable 
friends who lived nearer the place of worship. Never 
more than one service was held on the Sunday. The 
afternoon was needed for the congregation to return to 
their far-away homes. Prayer-Books were scarce and 
costly. 2 As late as the middle of the century only two 
Prayer- editions had been printed in England beside 

Books. ^ De ponderous folios and quartos for the read- 

ing-desks. Of the smaller Prayer-Books very few found 
their way to the colonies, and were but ill adapted to 
the worshippers' use, at best. The arrangement of the 
services in them was so intricate as hardly to ba intelli- 
gible. The Clerk, therefore, was depended upon for all 
the responses, except in the portions of the service 
which the people knew by heart. The surplice was 
Tery rarely used. Indeed, it is doubtful if there were 
then more than two or three in America. 

In England the ordinary street dress of the clergy 

1 King's Handbook of Episcopal Churches, p. 13. 

2 Perry: History, vol. i. p. 475. 



88 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IX THE COLONIES. 

was the cassock. 1 In America this dress does not seem 
ever to have come into use. In public the minister 
Social status officiated in the ordinary dress of a gentleman 
of ths clergy. f corresponding standing. His social stand- 
ing was very low indeed, independent of his personal 
character. Macaulay's highly colored picture of the 
English clergy of that time was fairly true of the 
Southern colonies. " A Levite," such Avas the phrase 
then in use, " might be had for his board and ten pounds 
a year; might not only perform his own professional 
functions, be the most patient of butts and listeners, be 
always ready in fine weather for bowls and in foul for 
shovel-board, but might also save the expense of a gar- 
dener or a groom. Sometimes the reverend man nailed 
up the apricots; sometimes he curried the coach horses. 
He was permitted to dine with the family, but was ex- 
pected to content himself with the plainest fare. He 
might fill himself with the corned beef and carrots, but 
when the tarts and cheesecakes appeared he quitted 
the board and stood aloof till he was summoned to re- 
turn thanks for the repast, from a great part of Avhich 
lie had been excluded. The attorney and the apothe- 
cary looked down with disdain upon the clergyman, and 
one of the lessons most earnestly inculcated on every 
girl of honorable family was to give no encouragement 
to a lover in Orders." Queen Elizabeth in her time, as 
head of the Church, had issued a special command that 
no clergyman should presume to espouse a servant-girl 
without the consent of her master or mistress. His 
children were brought up like the children of the peas- 

J Personal Recollections of Gilbert Scott, p. 28. 



A GENERAL SURVEY. 89 

antry. His boys followed the plough, and his daughters 
went out to service. Parson Sampson not only taught 
George and Harry Esmond their letters, but acted as 
overseer of their mother's negroes. A large proportion 
of the Southern clergy were adventurers, broken men, 
valets who had secured ordination from some complai- 
sant Bishop through the interest of their masters for 
whom they had done some questionable favor. A con- 
stant complaint was, also, that they were Scotchmen. 
Their letters of Orders were often suspicious, 1 and their 
characters still more so. Commissaries Blair of Vir- 
ginia and Bray of Maryland repeatedly reported to the 
Bishop of London that the meagre support of the clergy 
and the slight honor in which they were held prevented 
them from making honorable marriages and led them 
into disgraceful connections. A love-letter still sur- 
vives written by a Maryland clergyman to a planter's 
daughter, in which he argues at length that inasmuch 
as his suit was allowable on other grounds, the fact of 
his being in Orders ought not to be an insuperable 
barrier. 2 They provoked contempt and allowed them- 
selves to be treated like lackeys. Governor Nicholson 
led out one who was drunk in the church, and caned 
him soundly with his own hand ; clapped the hat over 
the eyes of another; and sent ^billets-doux to his mis- 
tress by a third. 3 He hectored and browbeat a whole 
Convocation and drove them to sign an adulatory testi- 

1 The Episcopal Church was suppressed in Scotland ; Scotch Orders 
doubted, and afterward declared null and void by England. Abbey : 
English Church and its Bishops in the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. p. 
179, ot ssq. 

2 Lodge: History of English Colonies in America, p. 90. 
» Ibid., p. 61. 



90 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IX THE COLONIES. 

monial to his own religious devoutness. Commissary 
Blair writes : " The governor rules us as if we were a 
Clerical company of galley slaves, by continual raving 

manners. anc [ thundering, cursing and swearing, base, 
abusive, Billingsgate language, to that degree that it is 
utterly incredible." a One commissary was given the lie 
in his own house by the governor ; 2 and the wife of 
another was pulled out of Lady Berkeley's pew by the 
wrist because her husband had offended its owner by 
w * preaching a little too home against adultery." 3 . There 
were always present in these colonies some clergy of 
exemplary life and high character, but neither their 
example nor their reproofs were able to redeem their 
brethren. Most of them were planters, and did priestly 
duty now and then to eke out their income. They 
hunted, played cards, drank punch and canary, turned 
marriages, christenings, and funerals alike into revels. 
One bawled out to his church-warden at the Holy Com- 
munion, " Here, George, this bread is not fit for a dog." 
One fought a duel in his graveyard. Another, a power- 
ful fellow, thrashed his vestrymen one by one, and the 
following Sunday preached before them from the text, 
"And I contended with them, and cursed them, and 
smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair." 4 
Another dined every Sunday with his chief parishioner, 
and was sent home in the evening drunk, tied in his 
chaise. 5 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Virginia, pp. 125, 491. 

2 lb. p. 491. 

3 lb. p. 27. 

4 Neb. xiii. 29. 

r > Cf. Meade: Old Cburcbcs and Families of Virginia, pp. 18, 162, 231, 
250, 275. 



A GENERAL SURVEY. 91 

In the Northern colonies both the character and the 
standing of the clergy were very much higher. In these 
colonies there had never been anything to attract un- 
worthy men. The duty was hard and ill paid, and 
only men who had high motives undertook it. In the 
South the disreputable priest might gain fortune as a 
tobacco-planter. In the North the conditions of life 
were harder. There also he Avas surrounded by a people 
whose religious life, at least in the early part of the 
century, was exacting. There was no establishment to 
sustain him. But, above all, the Puritan conception of 
the ministerial office had early made itself felt. While 
the priest in Virginia was content to be a lackey, the 
Puritan minister in Massachusetts was a petty poten- 
tate, the chiefest man in the communit}^, the censor of 
morals, the stern disciplinarian. In the Church the office 

was generally looked upon as a profession. 
Effect of Puri- f . . 

tanism upon Outside it was regarded as a spiritual calling. 

In England the position and accomplishments 

of the " superior clergy " were sufficient to keep for the 

office generally a certain respect. But the mass of the 

clergy were then held in anything but honor. A debt 

which the Church owes to Puritanism on both sides of 

the water is the restored reputation of the ministry. 

The popular mind never distinguishes closely between 

things which look alike. To it a clergyman is a 

clergyman, whether Episcopal or Presbyterian hands 

have been laid upon him. The ministry with which 

people were most familiar in the colonies was irregular 

in its commission, but held in high honor by those 

among whom it was exercised. For this reason the 



92 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

ministry of the Church, beginning with New England 
in the seventeenth century, and extending all over the 
country in the eighteenth, came to share that place in 
public esteem which has ever since been cheerfully 
accorded to the sacred office. 

In Maryland and Virginia the Church of England was 
established by law. It had privileges and immunities 
granted to no sect. Marriages could only be celebrated 
by its clergy. The glebes and perquisites were guar- 
anteed to its use. Its services and clergy were sup- 
ported by taxes to be laid and collected by process of 
law. Their brethren at the North envied their position, 
and looked to the time when they should be similarly 
blessed, but the event proved that what was deemed 
their strength was really their weakness. 

In Virginia the right of presentation lay in the royal 
governor, as representing the Bishop of London, but 
Conflict with the power of induction to the benefice was 
vestnes. with the vestry. Being once inducted, 
however, the vestry's power over the incumbent was 
exhausted. They could not remove him from his 
benefice, and they could not starve him out, for his 
income was assured by law. From this arose that con- 
test between the clergy and the vestries, which finally 
tore th3 Church to pieces. The vestries in many in- 
stances refused to induct whom the governor had nomi- 
nated. There was no power able to issue a mandamus. 
The result was that clergymen were hired by them from 
year to year, and made to dance attendance upon their 
pleasure. The position was an ignoble one, and had 
attractions only for unworthy men. Presently, as the 



A GENERAL SURVEY. 93 

vestries came more and more under the American idea, 
and the clergy more and more emphatic in their loyalty 
to the English Church and Crown, the breach widened. 
By the middle of the century we will find it to be incur- 
able. Sound Church notions of the relation of priest 
and people were completely thrown back and obscured 
by the political situation. When the clergy were only 
standing out for the inherent rights of their Order, they 
were placed in a position where they seemed to be the 
champions of a foreign political power. The union of 
English Church and State here, as always, worked to 
the Church's ruin. The true Church idea was almost 
entirely lost to sight by both sides. The same law, for 
example, which " established " the Church in South 
Carolina, provided for a board of laymen who could 
try and remove any minister against whom complaint 
should be made by a majority of the vestry, together 
with nine aggrieved parishioners. 1 The laity of the 
middle colonies were of much the same mind, but with- 
out the legal power to make it effective ; but the differ- 
ence between the two orders was, in kind, the same as 
in the South. A meeting of the clergy of New York 
and Pennsylvania formally resolved thenceforward to 
do without vestries altogether, but the vestries held 
their own, and have ever since been an effective part of 
the Church's machinery. 

In New York and Massachusetts the Church had also 
a legal recognition at this date, which seemed to place 
it at an advantage. In so far as the colonies were under 
the English law, after the revocation of the original 

1 Perry: History, vol. i. p. 376. 



94 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

charters, the Episcopal Church was that one which the 

law knew here. The Church, in a certain sense, went 

with the flag:. But the question of how far 

Effect Of & ,.« i ^ t ^ 

government English law was modified or suspended by 
support. ^ new c h ar ters and by colonial legisla- 
tion, was a mooted one. 1 Its manner of settlement, so 
far as the Church was concerned, inclined to either hand 
in proportion as the population was friendly to her or 
otherwise. Where it was unfriendly, every claim of pre- 
rogative by her produced irritation and opposition. In 
New England this was frequently the case. For many 
years the Church had not been allowed at all. When 
it came m with the new governor on the Rose frigate, it 
at once attached to itself all the obloquy which the new 
regime created. Its royal backing saved it alive, but 
guaranteed for it the ill-will of the community. Never- 
theless, by 1700 the " King's Chapel " had been built 
in Boston, its minister settled, and a considerable con- 
gregation gathered. But it was an exotic in a foreign 
climate, a garrison surrounded by a hostile people. 

To the eastward of Massachusetts there was but a 
single congregation. Gorges's ever faithful settlement 
The Church on the Kennebec had, through all the years, 
in the East. \iq\{[ steadfastly to their Church and Prayer- 
Book. For this they had been beset and harried by the 
.Massachusetts Puritans ; had been kept out of the New 
I'm gland League, and left single-handed to defend them- 
selves against the common savage enemy ; their com- 
merce had been destroyed, their minister stripped of 
property and almost life, and now, an old man, incapa- 
ble of duty and in poverty, he waited to die. 

1 Smith: History cf New York. London, 1757. pp. 220-228. 



A GENERAL SURVEY. 95 

To the westward there were a few Church families at 
the mouth of the Housatonic, and practically no more 
in the middle ^ New York Avas reached. In that town, 
colonies. with a population of about five thousand, 
Trinity Church had been built and endowed with a 
farm in the outskirts, had a minister and a claim to 
support by taxation. Accessions by immigration and 
by additions from the Dutch Presbyterians were nu- 
merous. The people were, upon the whole, not ill- 
disposed toward the Church. The whole province was, 
as we have seen, divided into parishes, and provision 
made for the support of the minister ; but outside the 
capital there were no clergy, and, with the exception of 
a little group in the eastern part of Long Island, no 
Church people. 

In Pennsylvania, Christ Church had been built at 
Philadelphia, and under its faithful rector, Evan Evans, 
was rapidly gaining ground, both in the city from the 
Quakers, and from the Welsh in the outlying settlements. 

In a word, at the opening of the eighteenth century, 
the Church may be said to have been planted in all the 
colonies. In some places, as we will see, it brought 
forth much fruit. In others it was choked, and required 
replanting. 



96 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE "VENERABLE SOCIETY." 

The Church is now lodged in the colonies, not as an 
organization, but in the shape of isolated congregations, 
widely separated, a minority in the population, linked 
to each other only through the Bishop of London, who 
had a shadowy power of superintendency over them all. 

In the period which lies between the year 1700 and 
the War of Independence, the history groups itself 
about a half-dozen topics. These we will notice in 
their order. The first is the work of the " Society for 
Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts" 

In the closing years of the seventeenth century, the 

Rev. Dr. Bray was the successful rector of a parish in 

Warwickshire. He comes in sight as the 

Dr. Bray. . 7 

first of the "working clergy." His spirit is 

distinctly modern. His methods strangely anticipated 

those of to-day. He was a "parish priest." He made 

himself familiar with the needs of his flock, and was 

fertile in devising plans for their benefit. Presently, he 

attracted the notice of his superiors, and was promoted. 

In his new office, he was oppressed with what he saw 

of the ignorance and general lack of equipment of the 

parish clergy. They could not feed their flocks, for 

they themselves were starving for lack of knowledge. 

Those among them who were best furnished with books 



THE "VENERABLE SOCIETY." 97 

had upon their shelves only the " Pearl of Eloquence, 
some German system, a few stitched sermons, with an 
old Geneva Bible and Concordance." Bray became 
their benefactor. He was one of those enthusiasts 
whose spirit is contagious. He interested his Bishop 
and other men and women of wealth and liberality, in 
the formation of a " Society for the Promotion of Chris- 
tian Knowledge." Its first purpose was to found parish 
libraries for the benefit of the clergy and then of the 
people. By his efforts that society which now com- 
mands the pens of university examiners and tutors, and 
even of prime ministers, was set upon a strong founda- 
tion. In addition to its work at home it took up the 
added task to provide libraries for the churches in the 
colonies. Before Bray's death he saw more than forty 
such furnished to America alone. 

In 1695, he was asked by Compton, Bishop of Lon- 
don, to visit and report upon the condition of the 
Church in the American Colonies. Compton's succes- 
sion to the See of London was the best thing that had 
yet happened for the colonial churches. His sense of 
official responsibility for them was great. His prede- 
cessors had looked after their affairs a Kttle, when it 
was convenient, but had not regarded themselves as 
legally responsible. Indeed, their shadowy jurisdiction 
was only the result of the accident that the then Bishop 
of London had been a member of the original "Vir- 
ginia Company." At Compton's instanc3, the Bishop 
of London was formally put in charge of the colonies 
by an order in council. 1 Regarding them then as a 

1 Abbey: The English Church and its Bishops in the Eighteenth 
Century, vol. i. p. 82 



98 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

part of his diocese, he sent Dr. Bray to investigate their 
situation. After an extended visit of five years, he 
returned and published his " Memorial upon the State 
Dr. Bray's °^ Religion in America." He reports l that 
"Memorial." j n South Carolina the Church was thriving, 
but at least three more clergy were needed. In North 
Carolina there were two Church settlements, a hundred 
miles apart, and no clergyman in either of them. In 
Maryland the endowment was, as yet, very insufficient, 
but the people had built churches for themselves. The 
Pennsylvanians had one Church of England Minister, 
well esteemed, and wished for more. The Jerseys had 
as yet none, but he thought there would be reception 
for six. New York had one ; there was room for at 
least two more. In Long Island there were nine 
churches (parishes), but no ministers. In Rhode Island 
the Quaker neglect for outward teaching had caused 
great irreligion. There was a church there, and room 
for at least two ministers. New England was under 
Independents. 

But Dr. Bray was not content with merely making 
his report. He had left his heart in America. He laid 
the case of the Church there before everybody whom he 
could reach. He printed pamphlets, wrote letters, con- 
ferred with the Bishops, appealed to Parliament, and 
engaged the warm interest of the Queen. Through his 

tireless exertion there was organized in 1701 
The s. p. g. . 5 

the first Missionary Society of the Protest- 
ant world. Its title was " The Society for Propagating 
the Gospel in Foreign Parts." Its charter ran : 

1 Ablioy : i. p. 84. 



THE "VENERABLE SOCIETY." 99 

" William the Third, King of Great Britain and Ire- 
land, Defender of the Faith, Greeting: 

" Whereas we are informed that in many of our plan- 
tations and colonies beyond the sea, belonging to our 
Kingdom of England, the provision for ministers is 
very mean, whereby there is a great lack of the admin- 
istration of the Word and Sacraments, causing atheism 
to abound for the want of learned and orthodox minis- 
ters, and Romish priests and Jesuits are encouraged to 
proselyte, ... we therefore empower these, our right 
trusty subjects ; " — then follow a hundred of the noblest 
names in England, with the Archbishop of Canterbury 
at the head, constituting the society. Its popularity 
was great from the outset. One member gave a thou- 
sand pounds for the work, another nine hundred for 
teaching the negroes. One gave to it his estate in the 
Barbadoes to found a college, and another a present of 
books and maps. Archbishop Tenison left it one thou- 
sand pounds towards founding two American bishop- 
rics. The proprietors of Vermont set apart townships 
for its use. Evelyn enters in his diary that he had 
promised twenty pounds a year to it. 1 The society's 
actions were marked by good sense, good spirit, and 
broad-minded charity. Its first act was to circulate an 
"Address" to all bishops and archdeacons, 2 asking them 
to choose out fit persons for missionaries to the colonies 
and the Indians. The qualifications to be carefully 
noted in the persons recommended were : their age, 

1 Caswall: American Church, p. 130. 

2 " A collection of Papers printed by order of the S. P. G., London: 
printed by Josex>h Downing in Bartholomew Close, near West Smith' 
field, 1712." 



100 THE ENGLISH CHTJBCH IN THE COLONIES. 

whether married or single, temper, prudence, learning, 
zeal, and loyalty to Church and Crown. The officials 
are solemnly adjured not to recommend any but fit 
men, and especially not to use the Society for the pur- 
pose of finding places for men whom they themselves 
, z wish to be rid of. " Standing- Instructions " 

Instructions - & 

to missiona- were issued to the applicants for appoint- 
ment, that th a y shall not lodge at any public- 
house in London, but at some bookseller's or such 
private house; shall attend constantly the Standing 
Committee of the Society ; that before embarking they 
shall wait upon his Grace the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury for his instructions; that when embarked they 
shall demean themselves so as to become remarkable 
examples of piety and virtue to the ship's company ; 
that whether they be passengers or chaplains they shall 
endeavor to prevail with the captain to have morning 
and evening prayers, daily, with catechising on the 
Lord's Day ; that during the passage they shall in- 
struct, exhort, admonish, reprove, with seriousness and 
prudence, so as may gain them reputation and author- 
ity ; that when they arrive in the country where they 
are sent they shall be frequent in private prayers, con- 
versant with the Holy Scriptures, Prayer-Book, Articles, 
and Homilies ; be circumspect ; not board or lodge in 
public-houses ; game not at all ; converse not with leAvd 
and profane persons, save to admonish them; be frugal; 
keep out of debt ; not meddle with politics ; keep away 
from quarrels ; say the service every day, when practi- 
cable, and always with seriousness and decency ; avoid 
high-flown sermons ; preach against such vices as they 



THE " VENERABLE SOCIETY." 101 

may see to prevail ; impress the nature and need of 
Sacraments ; distribute the Society's tracts ; visit their 
people, — in a word, bear themselves like Christians 
and gentlemen. 

For salary they were to have fifty pounds a year, and 
ten pounds for outfit. 

Among the many missionaries sent out by the Society, 
there were, of course, some who took to colonial work 
as a refuge from poverty or scandal, 1 but, as a rule, they 
made an impression at once by their high character and 
high Churchmanship, On this latter rock some of them 
split, but the general effect was to distinctly raise both 
the zeal and the tone of the Church in America. 2 

Their first missionaries were Keith, the whilom Phila- 
delphia Quaker, and his friend Patrick Gordon. These 
came out in the ship Centurion, and on the 

First mission- 
aries of the voyage the ship's chaplain, John Talbot, de- 
termined to join them. Within a few weeks 
of their landing Gordon died at Jamaica, Long Island. 
Keith and Talbot, under the Society's instructions, made 
a tour of observation extending from Boston to Charles- 
ton. Though they were very pronounced Churchmen, 
more so than most of the clergy at that time on this side 
of the water, they followed loyally the Society's desire 
that they should adopt a conciliating tone Avith dis- 
senters everywhere. They were to preach in their 
meeting-houses whenever opportunity might offer, not 
to offend their prejudices unnecessarily, and where 
possible, win them back to the Church. There is every 

1 Anderson : English Church in the Colonies, vol. iii. p. 149. 

2 Abbey : English Church and Bishops, vol. i. p. 91. 



102 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

evidence of a widely spread inclination on the part of 
dissenters in America in the first half of the eighteenth 
Conciliating century to return to the Church of England if 
dissenters. ^he wa y CO uld be made easy for them. It 
showed itself, as we will see later on (in connection with 
the story of the Episcopate), among Quakers, Lutherans, 
and Dutch, especially. The managers of the S. P. G. 
were men " having understanding of the times what 
things Israel ought to do." There is good reason to 
believe that if the Church had been here on the ground 
with a complete organization, the wise and conciliatory 
efforts of the Society's missionaries would have suc- 
ceeded in healing at least some of those breaches in 
Zion, which have grown wider as the years have gone 
by. 

Talbot writes from Philadelphia, September 1, 1703 : 
"We have gathered together several hundreds for the 
Church of England, and, what is more, to build churches 
for her. There are four or five now going forward in 
this province and the next. That at Burlington is 
almost finished. Churches are going up amain Avhere 
there were none before. They are going to build three 
at Carolina, and three more in these lower counties 
about New Castle, beside those at Chester and Amboy." 
The advent of the Society's missionaries gave an im- 
pulse to the Church's growth all along the line. But 
she lengthened her cords faster than she was able to 
Building strengthen her stakes. A considerable num- 
cnurches. k er £ ftie newly built churches were never 
occupied at all,. or at best for a short while, by the peo- 
ple for whom they had been erected. Clergy could not 



THE "VENERABLE SOCIETY." 102 

be had in sufficient numbers to man them. The mission- 
aries went upon their way to the southward, and the 
enthusiasm lagged. The new churches became " stables 
for the Quakers' horses when they came to meeting or 
market." x A circumference of enthusiasm followed 
Keith and Talbot where they journeyed, but for the 
most part subsided when they had passed on. In 
Philadelphia and its vicinity hundreds of Quakers 
were baptized by them, and in the southern counties 
they were welcomed in the Independents' meeting- 
houses, where they preached, and commended the 
Church to all who heard them. After a visit of two 
years Keith returned to England, and Talbot settled 
down as permanent incumbent at Burlington, N. J., 
where he spent a long and honored life. 2 From this 
time until the War of Independence the history of the 
Church in America is to be looked for in the records of 
the Venerable Society. More and more missionaries 
were sent out by it, and it undertook, in part at least, 
the support of the native ministry which gradually 
grew up. The letters of these missionaries to the sec- 
retary, written from the seaboard cities, the backwoods 

1 Anderson : iii. p. 238. 

2 It has been positively asserted that Talbot, when an old man, upon 
a visit to England, was consecrated to the Episcopate by the English 
nonjuring Bishops. Anderson, Hawks, Wilberforce, and Caswall all 
say so, apparently all following the same original authority, whatever 
that may bo. The Rev. Dr. Hills, in his " History of the Church in Bur- 
lington," discusses the subject exhaustively, and maintains the same 
assertion. In vol. i. of Bishop Perry's " History of the American Epis- 
copal Church " is a Monograph by Rev. Dr. John Fulton in which he re- 
examines the whole case, and arrives at the conclusion, which seems 
without doubt to be the truth, that Talbot never received such conse- 
cration ; and that the tradition itself arose from confounding his name 
with that of another man. 



104 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

settlements, the inland villages, the Indian encamp, 
ments, and preserved in the Society's archives, consti- 
tute a vivid picture of the Church's life for seventy 



1 Bishop Perry has, with infinite pains, collected and published in fine 
folio volumes the Society's documents relating to the Colonial Church, 
under the title of "Historical Collections." 



THE COMMISSARIES : MARYLAND. 105 



CHAPTER X. 

THE COMMISSARIES: MARYLAND. 

At the same time that the Venerable Society sent 
out its first missionaries, the Bishop of London commis- 
sioned Dr. Bray, the promoter of the Society, to repre- 
sent him in Maryland. He was empowered to assume 
the reins of the Church in the colony, to exercise disci- 
pline, to reform manners, to settle disputes, to preserve 
order, to build up the Church. His salary was fixed at 
four hundred pounds a year, — a liberal sum for the 
times, — all of which, together with his own patrimony, 
he expended on his work. 

Upon his arrival in Lord Baltimore's former Roman 
Catholic province, he found that the Church of England 
Dr. Bray in contained, at least nominally, about eighty 
Maryland. p er cen £ of the population. The other twenty 
per cent embraced the insignificant remnant of Roman- 
ists, together with Baptists, Quakers, Huguenots, and 
German Lutherans from the Palatinate. There was a 
larger proportion of people ecclesiastically unattached 
than in any other colony save South Carolina. The 
decadence of Romanism, the negations of Quakerism, 
and the long lack of organization in the Church, had all 
conspired to multiply this class. Still, the Church of 
England was the dominating religious influence. The 
Commissary at first mistook the temper of the people. 



106 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

Fresh from the Establishment at home, he undertook to 
introduce the same regime here. The disorders in doc- 
trine and worship were evident. The way to cure them, 
as it seemed to him, was to secure by force of law the 
same uniformity in worship and discipline here which 
the State Church guaranteed in England. He found in 
Governor Nicholson a man who was of the same mind, 
ecclesiastically, with himself. He and the Governor 
persuaded the Provincial Assembly, apparently without 
difficulty, to pass an " Act of Uniformity," substantially 
Maryland ^ ne same as that which had obtained in Eng- 
estabiishment. i an( j b e f ore the " Act of Toleration " made it 
tolerable. It provided not only that the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer should be used in all the parishes of the 
Establishment, but also that it was " to be solemnly read 
by all and every minister or reader in every church or 
other place of public worship within this province." a A 
storm of opposition at once arose. The dissenters asked 
indignantly whether or not they were to be accounted as 
Englishmen ; whether they were to be denied here in 
America that privilege of worshipping after their own 
fashion which had been allowed to their brethren in 
England for a generation. It was too late to protest 
against the Act in the colony, but their agents carried 
their grievances to the Crown, and, chiefly through the 
influence of the Quakers, succeeded in having the 
obnoxious clause vetoed in Privy Council. 

But the attempt to pass it had been a grave mistake. 
It failed, to be sure, but it gave the dissenters cause to 
distrust the Church's spirit. She seemed to them to be 

1 Hawks: Contributions, vol. ii. p. 98. Perry: History, vol. i. p. 143, 



THE COMMISSAKIES : MARYLAND. 107 

moved by a temper of gratuitous intolerance. It was 
all the more offensive because it was impotent. From 
being only indifferent to her, they passed into bitter 
enemies. The time came when they could make their 
enmity felt. But the law, as it still stood, put the 
Churchmen in possession. 1 Every minister presented 
by the governor, appointed, and inducted, received the 
" forty per poll," out of which he was to pay the clerk 
a fixed sum. Justices and magistrates were forbidden 
to perform the marriage ceremony, which was made the 
peculium of the Church of England clergy, at a fixed fee 
of " five shillings sterling and no more." The sheriff of 
the county was bound to collect the tobacco-tax for the 
minister. The incumbent was made ex officio a member 
of the vestry. The members of the vestries Avere bound 
to attend meetings under penalty. The care and repair 
of churches was provided for by a special tax, not to 
exceed ten pounds of tobacco for any one year. The 
dissenters were to be allowed to conduct worship a 
they saw fit, provided their places of meeting were certi- 
fied to and registered at the county court. 

Having secured the legal status of the Church, the 

Commissary set about investigating the condition of the 

clergy and parishes. A Convocation, at- 

Attemptto flip 

rsform man- tended by fourteen of the clergy summoned, 
gave him the opportunity to address them 
with wisdom and earnestness upon their official conduct. 
A prolonged visitation which he undertook gave him the 
chance to see their manner of life. He found among 
them some devout and earnest men, but a still larger 

1 Perry : History, vol. i. p. 143. 



108 THE ENGLISH CHUECH IN THE COLONIES. 

number who had fallen into the easy manners of the 
time and place, whose professional duties sat lightly 
upon them, and some whose lives were a scandal, and 
whose duties were utterly neglected. He began by 
proceeding against one or two flagrant offenders against 
morals and decency. He found the task of reform far 
more difficult than he had anticipated. He had but 
small real power over the clergy. The Church being 
" established," the Missionaiy Society in England as- 
sumed that it was able to look after itself, and declined 
to take any of the clergy upon its pay-rolls. That 
shai^est kind of discipline, cutting off the offender's 
salary, was therefore not available. Beside that, the 
clergy held their incumbency by the appointment of the 
Governor, and he was always jealous of any interference 
with his prerogatives. Moreover, the easy-going habits 
of the clergy suited the people very well. They were 
at heart somewhat afraid of the new type of minister 
which Dr. Bray held up as the model. 1 Believing that 
he could better serve the interest of his province from 
London than by remaining in it, he went home, and 
never again returned. For a while he continued to 
hold his office, but soon resigned it, joining in the re- 
quest of the clergy of the colony, that another Commis- 
sary might be sent out ; but until his death in 1734 he 
never flagged in his zeal. He pressed upon the authori- 
ties, without ceasing, the necessity of a resident bishop. 
He kept the Church at home informed concerning Mary- 
land, collected money for it, and secured recruits for its 
ministry. 

1 Hawks : Ecclesiastical Contributions, New York, 1839, vol. ii. p. 213. 



THE COMMISSARIES : MARYLAND. 109 

But in the colony the inevitable conflict between the 
clergy and the people began to develop itself. The 
The irrepress- resuscitation of Church life brought it out. 
ibie conflict. "While the clergy were apathetic, especially 
while they refrained from magnifying their office, it lay 
latent. But the toning up of the priestly standard, and 
above all the emphasis put upon the legal establishment, 
brought out to view the inherent conflict of interest. 
The history of the Church here, as in Virginia, is simply 
the story of the long controversy between the clergy, 
and the people represented by the legislature. Some- 
times the Governor took one side and sometimes the 
other, and sometimes the contest was triangular. In 
this situation healthy Church life was impossible. Dis- 
cipline could not be maintained. The confusion of 
rights and powers was hopeless. "Thus the proprietor 
selected a clergyman in England ; the Bishop of London 
gave him a license ; the Governor inducted him ; if he 
did wrong the Commissary tried him (if there hap- 
pened to be a Commissary) ; and, when convicted, no 
power punished him ; for, after induction, even the pro- 
prietor could not remove him, and the Bishop of London 
could neither give nor take away the meanest living in 
the province." : Nor were the laws any more able to 
protect good clergy in their rights than to punish bad 
ones for their faults. When a new Commissary, Mr. 
Henderson, landed in 1730, he barely escaped being 
mobbed. 2 A chivalric layman struck him in the face, 
and the blow was meekly borne ; he struck him a second 
time, and received such a drubbing from the reverend 

1 Hawks: Ecclesiastical Contributions, vol. ii. p. 190. 

2 lb.: vol. ii. p. 204. 



110 THE ENGLISH CIIUJICH IN THE COLONIES. 

man's hands as taught him never to do the like again. 1 
Another clergyman took to task a layman who had 
slandered the cloth generally, and for doing so was 
challenged to fight a duel. When he declined he was 
sot upon by the layman and beaten within an inch of 
his life. 2 The breach between clergy and people grew 
wider yearly. The Romanists and Presbyterians looked 
on with unconcealed glee. The Church's extremity 
was their opportunity, which they did not fail to em- 
brace. The Churchmen saw that the only hope of 
salvation for the distracted Church .lay in securing a 
resident bishop who could assume the reins, and bring 
order out of the confusion. They represented the case 
so strongly to the authorities of the mother Church, 
that for the first time, after a century of effort, consent 
was secured. Gibson, Bishop of London, asked the 
clergy to select a fit man, send him to England, and 
he would consecrate him his suffragan for Maryland. 3 
Whether the Bishop had secured the royal warrant for 
his proposed action is somewhat doubtful. But in any 
case it was not put to the test. For when the Maryland 
clergy chose Colebatch, one of their number, in obedi- 
ence to his mandate, the Colonial Legislature issued a 
writ ne exeat and forbade him to leave the province. 
The local legislature could not disestablish the 
Church, but, by a series of sinister acts, they 
hostile to the made the Establishment worse than useless. 
Little by little the Church ceased to lean 
upon it, but unfortunately was not able to disentangle 
itself so as to stand upon a purely religious footing. 

1 Hawks: vol. ii. p. 205. - lb. p. 20(5. 3 lb. p. 196. 



THE COMMISSARIES : MARYLAND. Ill 

Here again, as everywhere, they who took the sword 
perished by the sword. " Had affairs," says Dr. 
Hawks, " been permitted to proceed to their natural 
termination without that interruption caused by the 
American Revolution, the time would have come when 
the singular spectacle would have been seen of the 
extinction of a church established by law, while no 
man could have found in the legislation of the country 
a statute depriving it of its character as an establish- 
ment. The law that gave it preference would have 
still stood unrepealed among the early acts of the 
province ; while the history of its downfall might be 
traced in the side blows of an indirect legislation." 1 
Under the circumstances Romanism took a fresh start ; 
the Presbyterians flocked in from Pennsylvania and 
Delaware, and from Ulster direct; and the Church of 
England gradually but surely lost ground and lost 
character. At the close of the period before us, while 
devout and godly men like Bray, Henderson, Boucher, 
and many others had given themselves to her service, 
still the Church had fallen far behind in the march of 
population ; had many ml worthy men serving at her 
altars ; had gained the enduring hostility of dissenters ; 
lost the love of her own children, and waited for the 
political catastrophe out of whose ruins she was to 
emerge to a new and better life. 

1 Hawks : vol. ii. p. 247. 



112 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE COMMISSARIES : VIRGINIA. 

During all the time that Dr. Bray was the Bishop of 
London's representative for Maryland, Dr. Blair held 
The Virginia tne same office in Virginia. His was by far 
Commissary, the largest and most important service of all 
the Commissaries. Beginning the duties of his office 
in 1685, he continued in it fifty-three years. He was 
a Scotchman, in Scotch orders, and with a Scotch 
temper ; shrewd, far-sighted, cautious, and masterful. 
His Orders and his policy were more than once called 
in question, but they were both more than vindicated 
in the issue. When he first surveyed his field he 
found a population loyal to the Church and Crown. 
Virginia boasted herself as the " ever-faithful colony." 
Her people were pleased to say that "Charles II was 
King in Virginia before he was in England." The 
Puritan revolution which broke over the Church both 
at home and in the colonies left this one practically 
untouched. Her people lived on serenely, preserving 
their old fashions of life and worship, Avithout much 
thought of the saints or their Commonwealth. They 
still called themselves the servants of the King, and 
when the Stuart line ended they transferred their loy- 
alty to William and Mary. Neither nonjuror nor dis- 
senter gained influence among them. Dr. Blair, upon 



THE COMMISSARIES : VIRGINIA. 113 

his arrival, found the most unmixed Episcopal com- 
munity that has ever existed on this Continent. He 
found a considerable number of clergy still surviving 
whose standard of life and work was modelled upon 
that of the saintly Hunt and the apostolic Whittaker. 
But he found a still larger number who had fallen away 
from the heroic type of the early days, and had con- 
formed themselves to the lower manner of life which 
had then fairly set in. The lack of education, among 
clergy and people both, struck the Commissary with a 
special horror. To correct this, he set about a plan 

, „ , which had been intermittently wrought upon 

William and J & r 

Mary Col- almost from the first settlement of the col- 
ony. That was to establish and endow an 
institution of learning, which should be, first of all, a 
seminary for educating a ministry, and, in addition, 
a college, a school for the youth of the colonists, and a 
place where the children of the native Indians could be 
educated in civilization and Christianity. " To furnish 
a seminary of Ministers of the Gospel, educate youth 
in good manners, and propagate truth among the 
Indians in these parts," was the way the charter stated 
it. The establishment of William and Mary College is 
due chiefly to the tireless, patient, arduous labor of 
Dr. Blair, its first president. His expectation that the 
Church people would forward his plans with enthu- 
siasm for so desirable a purpose was bitterly disap- 
pointed. He found them for the most part apathetic, 
and often hostile. Nowhere in the colonies were social 
distinctions so sharply drawn and so long-lived as in 
Virginia. The rich and cultured had already begun to 



114 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

form a caste, and to draw away from the common 
people. The sympathies of the clergy were largely 
with the former. In some cases they were their friends 
Opposition to an( ^ re hitives ; in still more, their humble 
the college, retainers. The rich planters would have 
none of the new college. They did not need it for 
themselves, and did not want it for others. They 
sent their own sons home to be trained, like Madam 
Esmond's boys, at English schools and universities, 
and to learn the manners suited to their rank in life. 
If the sons of the butcher, the baker, and the candle- 
stick-maker should get a smattering of polite learning, 
in a cheap way, out in the backwoods, the effect would 
only be to induce them to forget their place, and the 
proper distinctions among persons would be lost sight of. 
The general sentiment of the clergy corresponded. They 
were not conscious of special defect in themselves in 
point of learning, and could not see why the present con- 
dition of things should not continue. Quieta non movere! 
The official opinion in England was the same. It 
looked upon the colony as a " plantation," not as the 
beginning of a State. When the Attorney-General was 
asked to draw up a charter for the projected college, he 
declined to have anything to do with such a piece of 
folly. When the Commissary pressed the duty upon 
him, and urged that the colonists also had souls which 
demanded care, he broke out with, u Damn their souls ! 
let them grow tobacco ! " Dr. Blair persisted, however, 
in spite of clerical apathy, lay hostility, and official 
reluctance, lie opened the subscription with one hun- 
dred and fifty pounds from his own meagre salary. He 



THE COMMISSARIES: VIRGINIA. 115 

secured twenty-five hundred pounds from the mer- 
chants of London, — the class of Englishmen who were 
always best informed concerning American affairs. 
Through the influence of Governor Nicholson a grant 
of twenty thousand acres of land was secured for an 
endowment. But when Sir Edmund Andros came into 
authority, every conceivable obstacle was placed in 
the Commissary's way. Not only was he personally 
slighted, but the power of his principal called in 
question. " Such of the clergy as are most refractory 
against [the Bishop of London's] authority are upon 
that account received into favor. It is a common 
maxim among [the Governor's] friends that we have 
nothing to do with the Bishop of London, nor no 
Church power." 1 The Governor gave nothing himself, 
and dissuaded his friends, not only from subscribing, 
but from paying what they had already subscribed. 2 
Squatters were allowed to sit down upon the College 
grant, and the rightful owners were powerless either to 
have them put off or to have the land surveyed. 3 

The idea was diligently promoted that the setting up 
of the college meant the setting up of a new tax-rate 
for its maintenance. Many of the clergy were of the 
sort who were both unable and unwilling to further the 
really noble ends which the Commissary had in view ; 
nor were his manners or methods always the best fitted 
to commend them. " Your clergy in these parts," writes 
an intelligent visitor to the Bishop of Lichfield, the 
King's almoner, " are of a very ill example. No disci- 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Va. p. 4. 

2 lb. p. 18. 

3 lb. p. 20. 



116 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IX THE COLONIES. 

pline or canons of the Church are observed. They are 
for the most part Scotchmen, people indeed so basely 
educated, and so little acquainted with the excellency 
of their charge and duty, that their lives and conversa- 
tions are more fitted to make heathens than Christians." 1 
He adds that what the people need above all things is a 
bishop ; that if a right reverend father, of the stamp 
of Governor Nicholson of Maryland, should come, it 
" would make hell tremble ; " that the people are 
much affronted because the Bishop of London has sent 
one Dr. Blair, a Scotchman, to represent him, whereas 
there might surely have been found an English clergy- 
man to fill that office ; and that Dr. Blair and the Gov- 
ernor were at loggerheads about the matter of the new 
college. But Dr. Blair persisted, and in 1700 building 
was begun at Williamsburg, from plans contributed by 
Sir Christopher Wren. Once the college was really in 
existence, and was found to be an institution in which 
the people might take pride, they turned toward it with 
much affection. It became at once, and con- 

The college _ _ ' 

and the tinued for some time to be, a centre of influ- 

ence for the Church. It was influential in 
raising the tone of both the clergy and the laity. It 
secured a better educated ministry. For a while it had 
some success in its plans for training the Indian youth. 
Seventy are reported as having been at one time under 
its teaching. ' 

But the elevation of the ministerial profession, ef- 
fected largely through the Commissary's educational 
and. disciplinary measures, brought out here, as the 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Va. p. 30. 



THE COMMISSARIES: VIRGINIA. 117 

same causes did in Maryland, the latent conflict between 
the English Church and the American people. The 
clergy represented a foreign authority, of which the still 
loyal Virginians had already begun to feel jealous. As 
the jealousy deepened, the people and clergy began to 
grow apart. When Dr. Blair died the people declared 
they would never receive his successor. Discipline de- 
Decline of clined, and the clergy became at the same 
discipline. ^ me i ooser { n their living, and more strenu- 
ous in insisting upon the right of support which was 
theirs by virtue of the Establishment. For many years 
the dreary story drags on, — the vestries trying to re- 
duce parish tax-rates by refusing to induct ministers 
into their livings, the clergy growing sharper in seizing 
their legal perquisites, and the honest priests and godly 
people grieving more and more at the deplorable state 
into which things had fallen. This last class never 
ceased their efforts to bring about better things. They 
addressed the Governor, represented the facts to the 
Attempt at Bishop of London, petitioned the Assembly, 
reform. b a t to little purpose. One of their best di- 

gested plans for improvement gives a strange picture of 
the Church life of the time. It is a " Proposition " sub- 
mitted to the Assembly in 1724. It 1 sets forth " the 
bad constitution of this country," especially in the fol- 
lowing particulars : — ■ 

(1) Many parishes are so small that they cannot 
defray the minister's maintenance. 

(2) Those parishes that are able are tempted to keep 
no minister, for, being without him, they keep so much 
of the parish levy in their own pockets. 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, Virginia, p. 334. 



118 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

(3) The livings of this country, "by reason of their 
meanness, encourage only the lowest sized divines to 
adventure among us, and by their equality of salary 
leave the diligent to fare equally with the negligent 
and blockish." 

(4) The precarious tenure by which they hold their 
living, being liable to be ejected by the vestry without 
any cause assigned, either keeps the better sort of min- 
isters away, or compels them soon to leave. 

(5) The want of plantations and mansion-houses, 
and the extreme difficulty of finding boarding places, 
specially for married clergy. 

(6) The abuses put upon them by the sheriff and tax 
collectors, who either pay their salaries in bad tobacco, 
or delay paying it till there is no market or freight for it. 

(7) The want of some effective mode of discipline, 
which will be able to deal with the scandalous ministers. 

To cure these evils, it proposes : 

To consolidate two or three small livings into one 
decent one ; that whenever a new settlement of a 
hundred tithables springs up within seven miles of a 
church, the vestry must build a chapel in it, to which 
chapel the incumbent must give a portion of his time ; 
that the vestry be compelled to pay the amount of the 
minister's salary into the church fund, whether they 
" induct " him or not ; to change the amount of salary 
from a fixed sum of sixteen thousand pounds ol 
tobacco, to forty pounds per poll, so that the salary 
will vary with the population, and, consequently, with 
the importance of the parish; that the glebe shall 
always contain " enough land to employ five or six 



THE COMMISSARIES : VIRGINIA. 119 

hands, have on it a house with a brick chimney and 
glass windows, a shingled roof, have at least one clear 
story ten foot pitch with two rooms and a closet and 
kitchen ; " that the glebe be stocked by the parish with 
four or five negroes under an overseer, and seven or 
eight milch cows ; that the incumbent shall have the 
right to appoint the tax collector ; that every minister 
who brings a license to the colony shall be examined 
by the Commissary and " certain of the learnedest min- 
isters;" shall in their presence "display his talents by a 
set discourse against Popery, Quakerism, or any other 
prevailing heresy ; " that any minister who shall be 
found guilty of fornication, adultery, blasphemy, ridi- 
culing the Holy Scriptures, or practising against the 
Thirty -nine Articles, shall be suspended for three years ; 
that for cursing, swearing, drunkenness, or fighting 
(except in self-defence), he shall be suspended for one 
year ; that because drunkenness is one of the most 
common crimes, and, at the same time, one of the 
hardest to be proved, the following shall be taken as 
sufficient proof of the offence ; " sitting an hour or 
longer in a company where they are a-drinking of 
healths, and taking his cups as they come round ; strik- 
ing, challenging, threatening to fight, or laying aside 
his garments for that purpose ; staggering, reeling, 
vomiting, impertinent or obscene talking, — the proof 
of these to proceed until the judges are satisfied that 
the minister's behavior was unbecoming' or failing; of 
the gravity of a minister; provided, that inasmuch as 
many of the signs be fallible as proofs of drunkenness 
(for vomiting may happen to a sober person from weak- 



120 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

ness of stomach, and reeling from a sudden disease 
causing giddiness of the head), two or three credible 
witnesses who were in the company (and not drunk 
themselves) shall declare upon oath that in their opin- 
ion drunkenness was the cause of these signs ; " that to 
each several article of this proposition " the lawyers 
shall contrive such good binding clauses and penalties 
that the law will execute itself." 

The heroic remedies proposed show how deep-seated 

and diffused the malady was. But it must not be 

supposed that the Church was dead or its 

Devoted men 

in the c l er gy ai l scandalous. Godly and well- 

learned men were' serving her altars, and 
from time to time new churches were being organized 
by the noble laymen of which Virginia was fruitful 
even during 'this period. "King Carter" built a church 
at his own expense in the Northern Neck. 1 A new 
church was built at Glocester, with pulpit " hung with 
costly lace and damask, and a fine picture of the Last 
Judgment" was set over the altar before which the Wash- 
ingtons worshipped. 2 A dozen others in the colony date 
from the same period. Washington, Patrick Henry, 
Harry Lee, John Randolph of Roanoke, and others 
whose names afterward rang through two continents, 
were alive, working, scheming, planning, praying in 
the Church. A Welsh colony of Church of England 
people moved into Virginia and Southern Pennsjdvania, 
and for a while maintained a vigorous and flourishing 
life, but were ultimately swept into the rising stream 

1 Rev. Philip Slaughter in Perry's Hist. vol. i. p. 628. 

2 lb. p. 627. 



THE COMMISSARIES : VIRGINIA. 121 

of Americanism, caught in the current of the revival- 
ism which was then sweeping southward like a torrent, 
and, for the most part, carried away from the Church. 

A root of bitterness had been planted from which 

sprung up a pestilent fruit. The next generation 

found but the ruins of their fathers' altars, 

Growing 

spirit of their church walls crumbled and overgrown. 

Americanism. * • *i i i n- j_ _e • ^ if i 

An irreconcilable conflict 01 interests lorced 
the clergy and people apart, and brought disaster upon 
the Church. The evil was inherent in the situation. 
The real question at issue was but dimly discerned by 
either party to it. It was the foredoomed struggle which 
became inevitable when the colonies were planted, and, 
sooner or later, was fought out in each one of them. 
The peculiar shape it assumed varied in the several 
commonwealths, but was in essence the same in all. In 
Virginia it was settled in its ecclesiastical form before 
it was opened in its civil shape. It came to an issue in 
The "Par- ^ ne celebrated " Parsons' Cause." * The situa- 
sons' Cause." tion was as follows : The Church of England 
was established by law and supported by revenue from 
taxation. The political divisions known in the Northern 
colonies as townships were here parishes. The vestry 
was elected by the legally qualified voters. It was in 
their hands to "induct" to his living the minister nomi- 
nated by the Governor representing the Bishop of Lon- 
don. Being once inducted, a salary of sixteen thousand 
pounds of tobacco was due him by law, to be collected 

1 For the best account of this important event see Prof. Moses Coit 
Tyler: Life of Patrick Henry, p. 32, et seq. 
1 Anderson: vol. iii. p. 136. 
1 Perry: Historical Collections, Va. 490, et seq. 



122 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

by the sheriff. Tobacco was a commodity which fluctu- 
ated in value from year to year. In the seasons when 
it was low in the market, the parson pocketed his loss 
and waited to recoup himself next year, when it might 
be high. The quantity of sixteen thousand pounds was 
nominated in the bond. In 1763, a series of years in 
which the tobacco had been very low was followed by a 
time of very high prices. The parson could put his 
tobacco on the market and make good what he had lost 
in the preceding years. But the laity were reluctant to 
hand over the weed. By withholding it they could fill 
their own purses, and at the same time squeeze out the 
clergy against whom their grudge had steadily risen. 
The only thing to hinder was the law. This they 
found a way to evade, or rather violate. The Assem- 
bly passed an act to pay the parsons' salaries in Vir- 
ginia currency, at the rate of twopence halfpenny per 
pound for the tobacco. In effect, it confiscated their 
tobacco and compelled them to take for it a price less 
than one-fourth of that which it would have brought in 
the market. But the Assembly knew that they were 
acting ultra vires in passing such a law. It was null 
and void, without the indorsement of the Crown. This, 
they knew, it never would receive. They therefore 
made it operative for a period of ten months from the 
time it was enacted. This, as they estimated, would 
cover the time required to take an appeal across the 
water and return, and in the mean while, for that year, 
at least, their purpose would have been gained. The 
clergy asked to be heard in opposition to the act, and 
were refused. They therefore drew together for consul- 



THE COMMISSARIES: VIRGINIA. 123 

tation as to the ruin which threatened them. They 
chose a committee of their number who proceeded to 
England to protest before the Privy Council. The 
Crown lawyers assured them that the act was of no 
legal force whatever, and advised them to go back and 
sue for their salaries. They followed the advice, and 
the Rev. Thomas Warrington, of Elizabeth City, made 
up his' case as a test. His plea was that the act was 
inequitable, in that it, without warning and without 
redress, cut down the salaries from four hundred 
pounds to one hundred and fifty pounds ; that it was a 
breach of contract which was perilous to every citizen ; 
that the act was null and void wanting the royal 
indorsement. The case for the vestry, against whom 
his suit was brought, was so bad that no lawyer with a 
reputation would touch it. When the case was immi- 
nent, there chanced to be a lawyer without either legal 
reputation or social standing, himself a Churchman, 
Patrick wno was willing to undertake it. His name 

Henry. was Patrick Henry. His argument before 

the jury raised him to celebrity at a bound, showed his 
wonderful sagacity, and brought into dazzling vividness 
the Church's position in America. He brushed away 
all question of either law or technical equity. Ho 
declared that England had no essential right to tax this 
country for any purpose ; that the colonies had both the 
right and the ability to regulate their own affairs, 
religious as well as civil ; that the only purpose of 
religion which law can recognize is its function of 
making good citizens ; that the community wherein 
this function is exercised must regulate it; that the 



124 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

clergy by appealing to a foreign state had proven 
themselves to be at once bad citizens and unworthy 
ministers. These contentions he made effective, not 
only, and probably not chiefly, through his overwhelm- 
ing eloquence, but because he put into words, biting, 
burning, unforgettable words, the sentiments which 
were and had long been vaguely in the people's 
hearts. In any case, through the plea of a man him- 
self a devout communicant of the Church, addressed to 
a jury composed of hereditary Churchmen, the Church 
in the person of its clergy was defeated in a case where 
it had all the law, all the justice, and all the traditions 
of a hundred and fifty years on its side. The Church 
appealed to Caesar, — and lost. The appeal was never 
repeated. The breach was final. 1 Ten years later, it 
was evident to all that the Church could not grow in 
America until it should be, either by kindly or forcible 
means, disentangled from the English state. 

Passing southward from Virginia, the population 

gradually became more sparse, and clustered about 

Charleston and Savannah as its chief points 

The Church m f L 

in other of radiation. The Church life in Ogle- 

thorpe's Georgia settlement will come in 
sight in connection with Whitefield and the Wesleys 
and the Methodist movement. In North Carolina it 
remained weak throughout the century. The Scotch 
and later on the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians early made 
a lodgement in the territory, and became, in connection 
with the Baptists, 2 the dominant religious influence. In 

1 Tyler: Patrick Henry, p. 77. 

2 Benedict: History of the Baptist Denomination in America. Boston, 
1820, p. 333. 



THE COMMISSARIES : VIRGINIA. 125 

South Carolina at the opening of the eighteenth cent- 
ury, there was one strong parish at Charleston, — the 
only one in the province. Between that time and the 
Revolution it had gained another parish in the same 
city, had spread to Beaufort, and from there as a 
second centre, to Goosecreek, Prince George, Santee, 
through and among the new plantations, and in the 
new settlements, as they one by one sprang up. 1 As 
early as 1707 the S. P. G. maintained six clergy in the 
province and had sent over two thousand volumes of 
books for gratuitous distribution. 2 Two-thirds of the 
population at the beginning of the century were Dis- 
senters. This proportion was increased by a stream of 
immigration from Massachusetts and the Northern colo- 
nies. The Church of England, on the other hand, was 
swelled by a considerable number of French Huguenots, 
whose names still survive. An ill-advised and impotent 
attempt to establish the Church, with rigorous laws 
against the Dissenters, — an attempt so indefensible 
that Queen Anne declared the act null and void, and 
the S. P. G. refused to send any more missionaries till 
it should be abandoned, — gained the ill-will of the 
majority of the people. In spite, however, of the inter- 
nal broils in the colony, of frequent and wasteful wars 
with the Indians ; in spite of the demoralizing effect of 
slavery, which, owing to the rice culture, showed itself 
more quickly in South Carolina than elsewhere, 3 the 
Church continued to more than hold her own until the 



1 J. J. Pringle Smith, in Perry: History, vol. i. p. 638. 

2 Graham: Colonial History, vol. i. p. 389. 

3 lb. : p. 292. 



126 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

great cataclysm. 1 A larger proportion of native-born" 
clergy were probably produced in this than in any other 
colony save Connecticut. This fact kept the priesthood 
and people more in touch with each other, and saved 
the Church there from much of the evil which befell her 
in Maryland and Virginia. 

In the Northern group of colonies the Commissary 
regime was little more than a name. The local 
churches, for the most part, managed their own affairs. 

1 Perry : History, vol. i. p. 394. 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONVERTS. 127 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE NEW ENGLAND CONVERTS. 

In the early years of the last century there lived at 
Guilford, Conn., a certain Mr. Smithson, whose name 
President nas been kept from oblivion through a single 
Cutler. kindly deed of his. He gave a Prayer-Book 

to young Timothy Cutler, a graduate of Harvard, and a 
candidate for the Puritan ministry. In 1720 the Rev. 
Dr. Cutler was the honored president of Yale College, 
and had read his Prayer-Book to good purpose. Re- 
mote from the Church, unskilled in her ways, holding 
high office in a society which was her hereditary enemy, 
he had learned to love the Prayer-Book, and to think of 
the Church kindly. Many of the prayers he committed 
to memory, and used, consciously and unconsciously, in 
his conduct of public worship. Their spirit colored all 
his own effusions, until he came to be noted for his 
u gifts in prayer." 1 He gathered about him a little 
group of men like-minded with himself, and for several 
years they quietly and patiently pursued a study of the 
nature and organization of the Church. Just a century 
before, this had been the burning question of the age. 
But at that time the combatants on either hand had 
not been in a temper to settle it on its merits. With 

1 Beardsley: History of the Church in Connecticut, vol. i. p. 34. 



128 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

Laud on the one side and the Puritans on the other, 
Star Chamber writs, broadswords, and pikes had been 
the weapons. The sparks struck in such collisions are 
brilliant but not illuminating. The Truth had shrunk 
away into the background, as she always does to avoid 
strife. But now the contest had long ago subsided. 
Episcopacy had won in Old England and Presbytery in 
the New. The parties to the strife deemed the matter 
settled because they were out of each other's hearing. 
President Cutler and his friends were Presbyterians, but 
students, calm-minded and lovers of truth. 

A question pressed upon them which is one of the most 
imperious that can assail any man, and is, at the same 
The question time, one f° r the entertainment of which he 
of Orders. usually receives little sympathy. To speak 
for God as His minister is the most awful prerogative 
that any man can assume. No sober-minded man will 
offer to do so without the clearest warrant. But from 
where shall he receive this warrant ? No man can give 
it to him of his own authority. He cannot trust to 
his own inward " call," for he knows too well the 
untrustworthiness of human emotions. Whence shall 
he derive a commission which will justify him to him- 
self in the assumption of so great an office ? An honest 
search for the answer to this question has led into the 
ministry of this Church a large proportion of her priest- 
hood. They ask themselves, "By what authority doest 
thou these things, and who gave thee this authority ? " 
The unique honor of being the first of this class in 
the American Church belongs to President Cutler and 
the little group of Puritan ministers who gathered 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONVERTS. 129 

about him. The college library provided the means 
to solve their doubts. Scant as it was, it fortunately 
contained the works of Barrow, Tillotson, Burnet, 
Sherlock, Patrick, and Whitby, masters 1 of definition 
and argument for the Episcopal theory of the Church. 
Slowly, and evidently with reluctance, the little band 
of students were forced to the conclusion that their 
ministerial commissions were defective, not because 
their acts under them were lacking in power, — a pirate 
or a guerilla chieftain may be potent without any com- 
mission, — but because they were lacking in authority, 
emanating as they did from an organization which had 
separated itself from the league of Christian States. " I 
hoped," says one of them, " that when I was ordained I 
had satisfied myself of the validity of Presbyterian ordi- 
nation under the circumstances. But alas ! I have ever 
since had growing suspicions that all is not right, and 
that I am an usurper in the House of God." Of course, 
this will seem but the vagary of a diseased sentiment, 
to all who think of the Church as organized by men 
and deriving its authority from the consent of its 
members. But he who has a deep sense of the very 
reality of priestly acts, especially if he have a timid 
conscience, will understand and sympathize with his 
perplexity. Gradually the convictions of the little 
company settled upon the Church of England. It 
The Church's attracted them, not as a strong political 
attraction. establishment, — its political entanglement 
was but a stumbling-block to them ; not by the sweet 
strains of its Liturgy, — that sound had never fallen 

1 Beardsley : History of the Church in Connecticut, vol. i. p. 35. 



130 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

upon their ears ; not by its formulated dogmas, — 
these did not seriously differ from those which they 
held already ; but solely by its power as an Apostolic 
Church to confer a valid commission upon men to 
preach the Divine Word and administer the awful 
Sacraments. This clear and simple conviction deter- 
mined their action, and, through them and their spirit- 
ual successors, went far to fix in that mould in which 
it is still held, the American Church's way of thinking 
of the ministry. 

Few of these men's confreres knew or suspected the 
direction in which they were moving. At the college 
commencement Sept. 13, 1722, President Cutler asked 
the trustees to meet him in the library at the close of 
the exercises. When all were assembled he read them 
a statement which acted upon them, and through them 
upon New England society, like an electric shock. 
The statement, signed by himself and six tutors and 
fellows of the college, stripped to simplicity, was, that 
the signers were doubtful of or convinced against the 
validity of Presbyterian ordination, and had deter- 
mined to apply for Orders in the Church of England. 
The surprise and consternation were indescribable. It 
was as though in our day the president and faculty of 
Princeton should declare for the Pope, or the dean and 
professors of the General Seminary should avow them- 
selves Quakers. Lamentation resounded on every hand. 
A day of fasting and prayer was called to avert the 
Divine wrath at the strange defection of these leaders 
in Israel. The converts had offered to make a public 
statement and defence of their position if it should be 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONVERTS. 131 

desired. It was desired, and a day for the great debate 
fixed during the session of the Connecticut Legislature. 
The Governor, Saltonstall, presided with courtesy and 
fairness, rebuking the railing spirit in which their oppo- 
nents conducted their arguments. Of course nothing 
came of the debate but to fix each side more firmly in 
its own opinion. Cutler was " excused " from any 
further duties in the college. Three of his associates 
resigned their charges and cast in their lot with him, 
burning their bridges behind them. Several, more 
timid or less convinced, retained their connection with 
the Puritan establishment, but preserving all their 
lives a friendly attitude toward the Church. Three 
President °^ them, Cutler, Brown, and Johnson, pro- 
Cutler and ceeded at once to England for ordination, 
professors en- 

terthe Their name and fame had gone before them. 

They were received with a warm welcome. 
Cutler and Johnson were ordained, but Brown perished 
of smallpox. A second parish lately organized in 
Boston called Cutler to be its rector. Johnson went 
to Stratford, where there had been for many years a 
little group of Church of England families, became 
their pastor, and entered upon that long career of use 
and influence hardly surpassed by any name in the 
Church's annals. He was invited by Benjamin Franklin 
to become the head of the newly organized College of 
Philadelphia, later known as the University of Penn- 
sylvania. He declined, and accepted another invitation 
to the presidency of King's College, afterward Columbia 
University. 

The great gain to the American Church by this move- 



132 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

ment was not that she had added half a dozen able men 
to her meagre ministry. It was that a new and abid- 
B 3 ginningof m g source of supply had been opened, 
a movement. These were but the advanced guard of a 
hoat of men of similar type who have entered the 
Church since their time from the same motives. It 
was the sporadic outbreak in America of the movement 
which had set in still earlier in England. " At this 
time there was a strong tendency in the Presbyterian 
type of Puritanism to conform in England. ... A 
little reasonableness on the part of the English bishops 
would have swept the entire Presbyterian party of Eng- 
land into the Established Church." * Their influence 
was at once felt in New England, beginning in Con- 
necticut. Within a generation the Church under the 
leadership of a native born ministry had penetrated 
every town, had effected a lodgement in every Puritan 
stronghold, had drawn into her membership large 
numbers of that sober-minded, self-contained, tenacious 
people who constitute her membership in New England 
Puritan oppo- to-day. The opposition of the Puritan author- 
sition. iti es was pronounced and bitter. It showed 

itself in a series of petty and vexatious acts of persecu- 
tion, some of which amounted to grievous wrongs. 
But the innate kindliness and cautious fair-mindedness 
of the Connecticut people constantly interposed to break 
the blows of Puritan zeal. 2 Laws were made which 
worked in favor of the " Established Order " and against 
the Church, and remained in force for a hundred and 

1 Briggs: American Presbyterianism, p. 146. 

2 Perry: History, i. 290, et seq. 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONVERTS. 133 

fifty years. 1 Occasionally they wrought great hard- 
ship, but, upon the whole, the Church in New Eng- 
land had less to complain of in the eighteenth century 
than dissenters had in New York and the Southern 
colonies. The idea of invoking force of any sort to 
the aid of doctrine or order was gradually but surely 
retiring into that evil place from which it had emerged 
to curse the Church of God. 

The drift toward the. Church in New England 
received a very substantial impulse by the visit to 
DeanBerke- America of one of England's great and holy 
le y- men. In 1729 Dean Berkeley commenced 

his three years' sojourn at Newport in the interest of 
his brilliant but fruitless scheme of a great American 
University. His plan was to establish somewhere a 
foundation which should be to the colonies what Ox- 
ford and Cambridge were to Britain. It is his great 
honor to have been the first of eminent Englishmen to 
discern the future greatness of the western world. 
He prayed and strove that it might be built up upon the 
twin foundations of religion and learning, He was 
himself a notable example of both. By dint of his 
wonderful power of persuading men,' and the sweet 
graciousness of his person, he had extorted from the 
English minister, Walpole, a grant of twenty thousand 
pounds for his American University. But to secure 
the grant was one thing, to secure the money quite 
another. Walpole intimated to him that it would not 



1 It was not until 1878 that the parishes in Connecticut were at liberty 
to organize according to the Church's theory; up to that time they were 
all chartered as Congregational " Societies " under a general act, 



134 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

likely be paid unless he should show his earnestness in 
the matter by going himself to America. In pursuance 
of this advice, he took up his abode at Newport. His 
reputation as a philosopher, a scholar, and a saint, had 
preceded him. Learned men in America made pilgrim- 
ages to meet him, and came away unconsciously biassed 
in favor of a Church which could produce and retain 
such a man. The fact that the representatives of roy- 
alty in the colonies were always Churchmen had had its 
effect in attracting many to her. Now the fact that a 
prince in the kingdom of letters was one of her sons 
brought her into reputation in a different quarter. His 
visitors went to see a philosopher and found also a 
Churchman. The effect of his sojourn was marked in 
many ways. His friend the painter Smibert followed 
his fortunes, and from Smibert the Americans Copley 
and West caught their inspiration. 1 When he returned 
to England, despairing of his project, he left his library 
of one thousand volumes to Yale College and gave his 
Rhode Island farm to found a post-graduate scholarship 
in the same university. ■ These gifts were golden bene- 
factions to the struggling learning of the time. From 
his foundation at Yale, a stream of great men have 
gone forth, all more or less influenced by his spirit, and 
with a kindly feeling towards the Church of their bene- 
factor. By his gift the immortal writings of Hooker 
and Chillingworth found a place in the college library 
and moulded the lives of many of the seekers after the 
Chnrch. 2 His advice and counsel fixed in the structure 

1 Arnold: History of Rhode Island, ii. p. 99. 

2 Beardsley : Life of Samuel Johnson, p. 75. 



THE NEW ENGLAND CONVERTS. 135 

of Pennsylvania University and Columbia College, that 
principle of union in religion and learning which these 
institutions so long retained. 1 As a Christian, a Church- 
man, and a man, he greatly promoted the success which 
marked the Church in the Northern colonies through 
the first half of the eighteenth century. 

1 Beardsley: Life of Samuel Johnson, p. 75. 



130 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE "GREAT AWAKENING." 

In 1735 Jonathan Edwards was pastor of the Puritan 
church of Northampton, Massachusetts. 1 Young man 

Jonathan as ne was ' ne was a l rea( ty famous. When a 
Edwards. mere child, he knew Greek and Hebrew. 
When a lad, he pondered deeply upon " fate, free-will, 
foreknowledge absolute." In his beautiful body dwelt 
the fairest of souls, and the subtlest of understandings. 
His sweet young wife had also dreamed dreams and 
seen visions. A pair of mystics, enthusiasts, poets, and 
theologians, they journeyed hand in hand to his first 
parish at Northampton. He began his ministry at the 
time when the lament was heard on every hand that 
pure religion was perishing from off the face of the 
earth. The lament was not without cause. A distinct 
relaxation of religions life had already set in, and was 
as marked in New England as elsewhere in the colonies. 
" It began as soon as it was evident that the unique 
experiment of the Puritan fathers was over, when the 
theocracy which had inspired such enthusiasm was 
hastening to its downfall. It was as if God had turned 
away from favoring an enterprise which had His glory 

1 Allen : Life of Jonathan Edwards, pp. 133, 248. 

1 Tracy: The Great Awakening, Boston, 1845, passim. 



THE " GREAT AWAKENING." 137 

in view as its sole object and justification." * The fierce 
religionism of the early Puritan life could not be sus- 
tained. In a century it had burned itself out. A revolt 
against its hard and exacting spirit had already spread. 
Only the shell of it remained. The strong, if unlovely, 
life which had tenanted it was dying. Its remaining 
energy was wasting itself in theological quarrels barren 
of permanent result. 2 Meanwhile, carelessness of relig- 
ion and looseness of living were rife. Edwards's deeply 
religious spirit was profoundly moved by the situation 
when he came to realize it. Believing, as he did with 
all his being, in the inborn helplessness of all men to do 
or think any good thing, in a heaven whose ravishing 
beauty his poetic eye could see, and a hell whose black- 
ness and torment were to him a very present fact, his 
preaching assumed a tone which had not before been 
heard. His great store of theology furnished him with 
matter, his poetic instinct enabled him to set it in 
colors which men could not help but see, his psycho- 
logic skill qualified him to find a lodgement for his 
words in the heart and imagination of every hearer. 
The "Re- Such sermons as his had never been heard. 
Northamp- From preaching to his people once on Sun- 
ton - day, he came to preaching thrice. Then 

they came in crowds to hear him on a week-day as well. 
Then he preached every day. Then all business was 
gradually laid aside, and the people asked, " Brethren, 
what must I do to be saved?" All human concerns 
fell into insignificance before the great question in the 

i Allen: p. 53. 

2 e. g., the " Half-way Covenant." 



138 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

presence of which the whole community sat clown in 
despair. 

The peculiar answer which Edwards gave to this 
question has profoundly affected the religious life of 
America, shaped the fortunes of the Church, and yet 
dominates the Christian life of the land. Before his 
time both Churchman and Puritan had conceived of 
religion as an outward life.. It was obedience to a law 
or set of laws. It consisted of moral and religious 
conduct. The two parties had differed profoundly and 
often as to what particular action or class of actions 
were bounden on a Christian, but they had been at one 
in the assumption that religion is a question of right 
living. 1 

Edwards taught that it was a question of right feel- 
ing. His theory has passed into the popular mind and 
Edwards's is yet dominant. He replied to the eager 
" h Convi f - questionings of his Northampton people that 
2ion »" " conversion " is a drama which must per- 

force be played out consciously in each individual soul. 
Its characteristic stages were, first, a profound and 
awful sense of sin, guilt, helplessness, fear of God's 
wrath, dread of dire penalty, an internal agony which 
might border close upon madness ; second, a period 
more or less prolonged of doubtfulness, hope alternated 
with despair, glimpses of God's mercy only to be 
obscured by the vapors rising from a corrupt heart; 
third, a sudden and conscious emergence into a haven 
of sweet peace, a serene and heavenly frame, a sense 

1 Roger Williams had been banished for teaching that it is an inward 
experience. 



THE "GREAT AWAKENING." 139 

of pardoned sin and acceptance with God. He and 
his gracious wife, children of God from the womb, 
persuaded themselves that they had passed through this 
sequence of experiences. He watched over his in- 
quirers, and led them with infinite skill through its 
stages, — preserving the while the curious attitude of a 
scientific observer of the phenomena, — and helped them 
to find peace for their souls. 

His peculiar doctrine of salvation possesses singular 
fascination for the populace. It is capable of being put 
to an immediate test. It is less burdensome and exact- 
ing than it is to confront with a definite Christian 
purpose the complex and contradictory experiences of 
human life. 

The revival quickly passed beyond the bounds of the 
Northampton parish, but by the time it had done so it 
" Bodily ex- ^ a( ^ taken on another peculiarity even more 
ercises." striking. In the spiritual agony through 
which awakened souls were passing daily, the bodies of 
some began to show a strange sympathy. Men fell 
prostrate upon the earth and lay writhing, they lost 
temporarily the power of speech, their limbs moved 
rhythmically, heaven and hell became visible to their 
fixed and staring eyes. This new phenomenon for the 
moment staggered Edwards, but he soon satisfied him- 
self that it came from God. Why should not the body 
sympathize with the soul ? It was but the outward 
sign of the inward and invisible grace at work. He at 
once encouraged and tried to regulate the strange mani- 
festation. The outbreak of this new phenomenon 
attracted fresh attention to the movement. It began 



140 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

to spread. Sober and godly men set themselves 
against it in vain. Such opposition is always but half- 
Spread of the hearted, from fear lest haply one be found 
movement. fighting against God. Deerfield, Springfield, 
and far-away New Haven were " awakened." Churchmen 
and the more conservative Presbyterians stood aloof from 
the movement, 1 but the latter, after a long stand- against 
" enthusiasm," succumbed. The movement gathered 
strength and impetus as it spread. Gilbert and Wil- 
liam Tennent became its leaders in New Jersey. It 
swept in the Scotch Presbyterians in the back settle- 
ments of Pennsylvania. It worked down the valleys of 
Virginia, and drew in the multitudes of lapsed and in- 
different Churchmen. It climbed the mountains into 
Tennessee and Kentucky. It found a welcome among 
the mystical German sects, and touched the mercurial 
Welsh Churchmen among the foot-hills of the Allegha- 
nies. As it moved on through its seventy years' course 
its distinctive features became more and more marked. 
Strangest of all, they ceased to excite surprise, and 
came to be accepted as the ordinary concomitants of 
religion. An ej^e-witness narrates 2 that "a hundred 
and fifty of the congregation were so affected with 
„ violent spasmodic contractions of the muscles, 

liie jerks. 

jerking their heads quickly from side to side, 
frequently throwing their persons upon the ground, 
where they floundered like live fish. I have seen all 
denominations of religion exercised the same way, — 
gentleman and lady, black and white, young and old, 

1 Briggs: American Presbyterian, pp. 251-2. 

2 Tracy: Great Awakening, p. 222. 



THE ''GREAT AWAKE STING." 141 

without exception. I have passed a meeting-house 
about which the undergrowth had been cut away, leav- 
ing a hundred saplings standing breast-high, for the 
people to hold on to when they should have the jerks. I 
observed that when they had held on by them they had 
kicked up the earth as a horse does when stamping 
flies." Not only converts were so seized, but those who 
came to mock as well as those who came to pray. 
Sometimes it took grotesque and ludicrous forms. 
Some turned unseemly somersaults in the air ; others 
leaped and yelled as the devil in departing rendecl 
them ; and once a pack of men were found barking up 
a tree where the}^ had " treed the devil." 1 

When the movement reached Georgia it came in 
Meats contact with the Church of England in the 

whitefisid. person of George Whitefield. In response 
to Wesley's cry for aidj Whitefield had come out 
to Oglethorpe's colony as missionary to the Indians. 
Few men were ever less fitted for that duty. Wis- 
dom, patience, caution, the qualities which the mis- 
sionary to the heathen needs, Whitefield had none of. 
Half-educated, impetuous, self-conscious, ignorant of 
himself, impatient of law, but with a burning religious 
zeal, and a power of popular eloquence as great as 
was ever given to mortal man, he was fitted to 
become the champion of the " Great Awakening." 
Laying aside all his plans and work, and disregarding 
all authority, he took up the burden of Jonathan 
Edwards's prophecy. Bearing Whitefield on its crest, 
a reflex wave of enthusiasm swept back northward, 

1 McMaster: History of the People of the United States, vol. ii. p. 580. 



1-42. THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

upturning Church order, sweeping some into the king- 
dom and leaving others stranded at its ebb, until the 
two prophets met in Edwards's parsonage in little 
Northampton. Whitefield's presence was a stumbling- 
stone and a rock of offence. He was a clergyman of 
the Church of England. With but very few exceptions, 
Attitude of his brethren had held aloof from or definitely 
St£f"ite- opposed the movement. Its root principle 
vivai." seemed to them to be both false and danger- 

ous. Whitefield assailed them savagely, as his success- 
ors have often done since, for their bearing toward " this 
gracious work of God." "Unconverted men;" "with- 
out vital piety ; " " pagans ; " " dumb dogs that will 
not bark," were the best words he had for them. He 
ostentatiously turned his back upon his fellows, and 
became the hero of the revivalists. The Puritan clergy 
made much of his zeal, contrasting it with the cold 
morality of the Church to the latter's great discredit. 
Churchmen either openly defended their position or 
Ths raac- waited for the reaction which was sure to 
tion. come. It came even sooner than they had 

expected. The disorders which arise from the preva- 
lence of a religion of the emotions divorced from the 
ordinances of the Church and the sanctions of the con- 
science soon made themselves seen. 1 The " travelling 

1 The Rev. Timothy Cutler writes from Boston, September 24, 1743: 
"Whitefield lias plagued us with a witness, especially his friends and fol- 
lowers, who themselves are like to be battered to pieces by that batter- 
ing-ram they had provided against our Church here. It would be an 
endless attempt to describe that scene of confusion and disturbance 
occasioned by him,— the division of families, neighborhoods, and towns, 
the contrariety of husbands and wives, the undutifulness of children and 
servants, the quarrels among teachers, the disorders of the night, the 
intermission of labor and business, the neglect of husbandry and of 



THE " GREAT AWAKENING." 143 

preachers " wlio swarmed in New England brought 
such confusion into even the " Established Order " that 
the Puritan ministers themselves could not endure it. 
Whitefield turned away in dudgeon from the gentle 
rebuke of Edwards for his ill-tempered zeal, returned to 
England, and exercised his wonderful gifts, held in 
order by the tight hand of the Countess of Huntingdon. 
Edwards found the hearts of his own converts and par- 
ishioners turned against him. They whom he had car- 
ried through the crisis of their religious experiences 
refused longer to listen to him. Disappointed and 
heart-broken, he turned his steps away from his beloved 
Northampton, to his new home among the savage 
Indians. 

gathering the harvest. Our presses are forever teeming with books, and 
our women with bastards, though regeneration and conversion is the 
whole cry. The teachers have, many of them, left their particular cures, 
and strolled about the country. Som3 have been ordained by them 
Evangelizers, and had their Armor-bearers and ExhoUers ; and in 
many conventicles and places of rendezvous there has been checkered 
work, indeed, several preaching, and several exhorting and praying at 
the same time, the rest crying or laughing, yelping, sprawling, fainting, 
and this revel maintained in some places many days and nights together, 
without intermission; and then there were the blessed outpourings of 
the Spirit! 

" When Mr. Whitefield first arrived here the whole town was alarmed. 
He made his first visit to church on a Friday, and conversed first with 
many of our clergy together, belied them, me especially, when he hod 
clone. Being not invited into our pulpits, the Dissenters were highly 
pleased, and engrossed him; and immediately the bells rung, and all 
hands went to lecture; and this show kept on all the while he was here. 

" After him came one Tennent, a monster ! impudent and noisy, and 
told them they were all damn'd, damn'd, damn'd; this charmed thorn, 
and in the most dreadful winter I ever saw, people wallowed in the 
snow night and day for the benefit of his beastly brayings ; and many 
ended their days under these fatigues. Both of them carried more 
money out of these parts than the poor could be thankful for. 

" All this turned to the growth of the Church in many places, and its 
reputation universally; and it suffers no otherwise than as religion in 
general does, and that is sadly enough." 



144 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

The effect of the movement upon the religious life of 
America cannot be over-estimated. It obliterated the 
old ecclesiastical divisions, and drew a new 
American re- line of cleavage. It set and fixed the Church 
in that position which she still holds in Amer- 
ican Protestantism. She was thrust by it involuntarily 
into that place which has proven her stronghold. There 
have been in this country since the " Great Awaken- 
ing," and chiefly as its result, two radically distinct 
conceptions of Christianity. According to one theory 
it is primarily an experience, following in the main that 
which Edwards first fastened upon the popular mind. 
It appeals to consciousness. It devises machinery to 
awake the emotions. When they flag it has whips to 
stimulate them anew. It has the " Pilgrim's Progress " 
for its hornbook. Christian, the pilgrim, is the type of 
the truly converted man. It makes little of Sacra- 
ments. It empties them of their grace, and finds their 
rationale as a system of mnemonics. It distinguishes 
sharply between religion and morality. It uses faith as 
a word representing not the thing believed, but only 
the act of believing. It speaks its mind unconsciously 
in Moody and Sankey's hymns. 

For the other theory the Church stands as the best 
accredited representative. This has for its starting- 
The Church's point not the adult, but the Christian child, 
position. j t assumes i t to be a child of God. It leans 
on Christian nurture. It looks upon the Church as the 
hospitable home in which all have a right ; a right not 
contingent upon the passage through a conventional 
experience. It looks upon the Sacraments not as the 



THE "GREAT AWAKENING." 145 

marks and badges of a pious life already attained, but 
as the means of attainment thereto. It makes little of 
experiences. It is distrustful of spiritual cataclysms. 
It thinks that religious life to be most healthy which is 
least self-conscious. It refuses to distinguish between 
religion and morality, deeming them the same in es- 
sence. 

For all this the Church has stood since the middle of 
the last century. The two contrasted conceptions of 
personal religion, of course, did not begin at that date. 
But the effect of the Great Awakening was to bring 
out their contrast before the popular sense, and to fix 
the Church's place as the representative of the latter. 
Her growth has always been most rapid in those com- 
munities where the rival theory has most completely 
run its course. But she has not remained 

Its influence 

upon the uninfluenced by it. Much of the real re- 
ligious life which was present in the move- 
ment passed into her possession. It has saved her from 
being hard and mechanical. The Evangelical movement 
which came two generations afterwards brought into 
her ministry men who accepted Edwards's theory wholly, 
preached it, lived by it, championed it, faulted the 
Church for not accepting it outright, were as great 
and as good as any prophets who have ever delivered 
their message from her pulpits. But as a school they 
passed away and left the Church in the same attitude 
in which they found her. The spirit of the Great 
Awakening speaks in some of the Church's hymns, 
modifies her practice in deciding upon the fitness of 
candidates for Confirmation, leads her often to adopt a 



146 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

popular phraseology which does not mean the same 
from her lips that it does from others ; but, upon the 
whole, her ideal of the Christian life has remained 
unchanged. 

Here is to be found the secret of her steady growth 
at the expense of American Protestantism. The Epis- 
copal Church is the only one which constantly gains 
from others, and seldom loses to them. They who lose, 
in their chagrin, often charge her with holding a low 
and easily attained standard of leligious life. This is 
not the explanation. Her accessions are from those 
whose religious life is highest and deepest, but whose 
spiritual experience refuses to fit itself to the mould 
into which it is attempted to cast it. These, who seek 
righteousness of life, and are tortured as Edwards's 
poor people were through their feelings, seek the Church 
as the home of reasonable religion. 1 

1 It would be an interesting study to trace the effect of the Great 
Awakening upon the negro race in America. There is good reason to 
believe that their peculiar type of emotional religiousness, divorced from 
the sanctions of conscience, is clue to this movement, which for the first 
time brought within their reach a conception of Christianity which fitted 
itself to their peculiar race temperament. There does not seem to be 
any evidence of their characteristic type of religion previous to this time. 
Since then it has dominated them as a people. 



THE GERMANS. 147 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE GERMANS. 

While the Commissaries were reforming the Church 
in the south, notable scholars -coming to her aid in the 
east, and the Great Awakening was stirring the re- 
ligious life of the whole land, the last great wave of 
pre-Revolutionary immigration broke over the middle 
colonies. It came from two quarters, Germany and 
Ireland. It brought in two great populations, one of 
whom has always remained indifferent and the other 
opposed to Episcopacy. 

The ceaseless wars which became inevitable on the 
Continent of Europe when the Reformation motto cujus 
First German regio, ejus religio, was adopted, had wrought 
immigration, incalculable damage in Germany. The con- 
dition of the common people was deplorable. While 
the country was prolific of great scholars and leaders of 
the Reformation, the mass of the people retained much 
of their mediaeval barbarism. The feudal spirit which 
made his people patient of the great Frederick's cane, 
and still keeps the citizens of a mighty empire docile 
under the personal rule of the Kaiser, made the common 
folk then helpless to rise out of their low state. Con- 
tinual wars, changes of rule, changes of faith, bad 
government, made their lives intolerable. 1 Like the 

1 Seebohm : Era of Protestant Revolution, p. 33. 



148 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

unfortunate in all lands they turned their faces to 
America. In the last years of the seventeenth cent- 
ury they began to come. The bulk of them came to 
Perm's colony. Through his German mother and his 
own sojourn at Cresheim on the Rhine, Penn knew 
them and they knew him. In 1683 Pastorius brought 
the first detachment of twenty families, sat down with 
them six miles from Philadelphia, and properly named 
the first German settlement Germantown. 1 A few re- 
cruits followed from time to time, but thirty years later 
immigration came en masse. In 1709 a horrible famine 
wasted their fatherland. Thousands perished of cold 
and hunger. 2 The heart of the world, which at that 
time was not easily moved at the sight of suffering, 
turned toward the poor, dying creatures with compas- 
sion. Good Queen Anne of England offered to give them 
lands and homes in America and to help them move. 
Multitudes took her at her word. Thirty thousand 
made their way to London to escape starvation through 
the queen's goodness. 3 So many additional hungry 
mouths threatened to set up a famine there. The 
brutal populace of the city fell upon them in their poor 
camp at Blackmoor, beat them, drove them off to beg 
and starve among the lanes and hedges. Five thousand 
of them, being Roman Catholics, were sent back to Ger- 
many. Four thousand were sent to Ireland to settle 
waste lands about Limerick. The remainder, more than 
twenty thousand in number, were sent to America. Ten 
ships brought five thousand of them to New York at one 

1 Reichel : Moravian History, p. 15. 

2 lb. p. 15. 

3 lb. p. 10. 



THE GERMANS. 149 

time. They were carried up the Hudson and moved 
in behind the Dutch, who had lived for half a century 
on its western bank. 1 Their descendants are still found 
about Scoharie, Schenectady, Palatine Bridge, and west- 
ward to the head-waters of the Susquehanna. But the 
main stream came up the Delaware. Phil- 
syivania adelphia was their entrepot. Before the 
Dutch." middle of the century the immigration had 

reached and sustained itself- for several years at twelve 
thousand annually. 2 They moved in behind the Eng- 
lish and Welsh and sat down upon the rich limestone soil 
which stretches westward to the Susquehanna. From 
Pennsylvania they crept southward into Virginia and 
western Maryland. A smaller, independent stream 
flowed into North Carolina and farther south. 3 At 
the outbreak of the Revolution they constituted one- 
third the population of Pennsylvania. 4 Their religious 
and social condition was of the very lowest. Ignorant 
when they left home, their exposure and suffering 
reduced them still lower. Many of them came as 
" Redemptioners," that is, persons who had sold them- 
selves either outright or for a limited number of years 
to some shipmaster for the amount of their passage 
money. The advertisement pages of the dingy news- 
papers of the time are full of notices of rewards for run- 
away "Dutch servants." They were harshly treated, 
and upon the smallest excuse or no excuse at all had 
their time of servitude lengthened until many became 
hopeless bond slaves. 

1 Smith : History of New York, p. 130. 

2 Proud: History of Pennsylvania, vol. ii. p. 273. 

8 Williamson: History of North Carolina, vol. i. p. 184„ 
4 Proud: History of Pennsylvania, vc 1. ii. p. 273. 



150 THE ENGLISH CHURCH m THE COLONIES. ' 

From a religious point of view they were all classified 
as " Lutherans." The distinction which the Germans 
Their reiig- began early to make between Lutherans and 
ter^ncUon- Reformed was not observed by English-speak- 
dition. [ U g people i n describing them. The various 

German sects were in popular speech lumped together 
as Lutherans, that is, Germans who were not Romanists. 
With the exception of the few leaders, and leading 
German families who were broadly marked oft from 
the rank and file of their people, the mass were for the 
most part indifferent to religion in any form. The few 
preachers who at first accompanied their flocks grad- 
ually found their graves in the western wilds, or if yet 
living, their influence on new-comers was very slight. 
There were thousands, who, educated in Germany as 
Lutherans, but now scattered about in the fore? '& wilds 
of America, never saw a church or cared for it. Many 
were so utterly indifferent to all religion that it became 
proverbial to say of those who cared nothing for God oi 
His Word, that they belonged to "the Pennsylvania 
Church." 1 The chronic tendency of German Protest' 
antism to division made their religious condition worse. 
They became a congeries of sects, some of them holding 
as their distinguishing mark the most grotesque and 
whimsical practice or tenet. The mystical " Mennonite " 
would not allow the baptism of infants, would not take 
an oath, refused to bear arms, and wore a peculiar dress. 
The " Tunkers " held to the same theological and 
ethical views, but wore a different dress, and made it a 
point of faith to wear their beards untouched by blade 

1 Spangenberg: Life of Zinzendorf, p. 1230. 



THE GERMANS. 151 

or scissors. The " Siebentagen " observed the seventh 
day of the week instead of the first to keep it holy, 
denounced marriage as a snare of Satan, lived in com- 
munity, established an order of Protestant monks and 
nuns, and built for themselves monasteries, the broken 
walls of which still stand. 1 Anchorites lived solitary 
lives far in the forest, and hermits made their homes in 
the rocky caves along the Wissahickon. Besides these, 
Schwenkf elders and separatists of now forgotten names 
abounded. Their type may be seen in one sect which 
still exists, whose distinctive dogma is that men should 
wear hooks and eyes instead of buttons to fasten their 
clothes ! 

The numbers and character of the incoming Germans 
seriously alarmed the colonial authorities, and, after 
a prolonged agitation, it was checked and ultimately 
stopped by the imposition of a tax of forty shillings a 
head upon all comers. But before this was done the 
Germans who are now known as " Pennsylvania Dutch" 
had established themselves in a circle of settlements 
which surrounded the Church of England at those 
points where it was strongest. There they have remained 
ever since. They have preserved their original features 
of character and religious life with a tenacity which 
hardly an}^ other class in America can equal. Simple- 
minded and coarse in fibre, but strong and pertinacious, 
they have held their own, and the Church has made but 
little impress upon them. With the exception of the 
great and saintly Muhlenbergs, and a few others of kin- 
dred spirit, their names are absent from her rolls. 

1 At Ephrata, Lancaster Co., Penn. 



152 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

The Moravian Church came among them at a later 
date, and has since held in their midst much the same 
The Mora- place that the Episcopal Church has among 
vians. the English-speaking Protestants. It, though 

small in numbers, has probably affected the religious life 
of America more profoundly, though indirectly, than 
have the vastly more numerous German Lutheran and 
Reformed. Bishop Nitschman, in Savannah, became the 
teacher of the Churchman John Wesley. The Moravian 
Peter Bolder, as we shall see, gave him that cast of 
religious life which made him the founder of Methodism. 
Whitefield was their friend and co-worker. He bought 
for them five thousand acres of land at the forks of tjie 
Delaware to found a school for negroes, which was to 
be administered by them, 1 and then quarrelled with 
them and took the land away. But he retained that 
bias which his intercourse with Peter Bohler had given 
him, and, during his restless wanderings up and down 
the colonies, was more under the domination of the 
Moravian than the English Church. 

1 Eeichel : Moravian History, p. 78. 



THE SCOTCH-IRISH. 153 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE SCOTCH IRISH. 

At the period of the Reformation England and Scot- 
land were two separate nations, as distinct as the United 
England and States and Canada now are. England had 
theRefor^ through ner whole history resisted, and in 
mation. the end beat off, the aggressions of the 

Papacy. Scotland had succumbed almost entirely. 
When the time came, the Reformation had more to do 
in Scotland, had to do it by a harder battle, against 
greater odds, in the face of established authorities, re- 
ligious and secular, and through a far more bitter experi- 
ence, than fell to the lot of her neighbor. In England 
the king and officers of state, the bishops and leading 
clergy, led the movement. In Scotland all these opposed 
it. In England Episcopacy emerged from the long 
struggle intact. In Scotland it went down before the 
people's determination to reform, which purpose the 
bishops opposed. The Reformed Church of Scotland 
never forgot that the bishops had joined hands with the 
Papal enemy. 

Wishart and Knox brought into it the Calvinism and 
Presby terianism which they had learned at 

Calvinism J J 

and Presby- Basle and Frankfort and Geneva in the days 

of their exile. The twin system of Dogma 

and Organization struck its roots in the very fabric 



151 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

of the Scottish mind and character. It has lived there 
a more vigorous and tenacious life than elsewhere in 
the world. When it had decayed at Geneva it flour- 
ished at Edinburgh. When it had become loosened 
and capable of revision there, it is found in its pristine 
strength at Pittsburg. When the Protestant Revolu- 
tion had subsided, Episcopacy had been rooted out in 
Scotland, and the soil where it had grown sown with 
the salt of Calvinism. When the two crowns were 
united in that of James I, there began that 

Presbyterian- 

ism and long struggle for supremacy between the two 

pis y= peoples whose history had been so diverse. 
The match was not conspicuously unequal. The advan- 
tage which the more numerous population of England 
gave her was counterbalanced by the profound conviction 
and fierce tenacity of purpose which marked the Scotch. 
The stake at issue was the control of the ecclesiastical 
organization of the United Kingdom. The issue was by 
no means a foregone conclusion. If the English won 
when swords and muskets were the weapons, the Scotch 
knew how to "jouk an' let the jaw go by," and gain 
their end by cautious and patient diplomacy. Once, at 
least, they succeeded in having the "Solemn League 
and Covenant " against prelacy sworn to by monarch and 
parliament, and Presbyterianism made the law of the 
land. But the southern half of the kingdom steadily 
outgrew the northern, and in the long run numbers tell. 
Presbyterianism was beaten back beyond the border; 
Episcopacy crossed in pursuit, by the same path upon 
which the Covenant had once come southward. The 
ecclesiastical authority of the realm set about to exter- 



TEIE SCOTCH-IRISH. 155 

minate Presbyterianism, as it, in its turn, had attacked 
Episcopacy. 

In the contest from this time onward the weight of 
suffering fell upon the Scotch. It was a game of ham- 
Episcopal mer an( i anvil, and the English wielded the 
rigor. hammer. In the last quarter of the seven- 

teenth century the Scotch Presbyterian's life was a 
burden to him. " Uniformity " acts, " Test " acts, " Con- 
venticle " acts, entangled him at every turn. It was a 
felony to worship otherwise than by the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, to conduct family worship when more than 
five beside the household w^ere present, to preach with- 
out permission of the bishop, to boggle at abjuring the 
Covenant which the Presbyterian held sacred, to absent 
one's self from the parish church. All synods, presbyter- 
ies, and sessions were declared illegal. A new hierarchy 
was set up, with a renegade Presbyterian at its head. 
Ignorant and godless priests were set in charge of the 
churches. 1 The laws were enforced by sequestrations, 
fines, the gaol, the stocks, boot, thumbscrews, pillory, 
and the gallows. But all in vain. The stern stuff of 
which Scotch Presbyterianism was made finally pre- 
vailed, and the Presbyteiy became established north of 
the Tweed. 

Meanwhile many to whom life had become intoler- 
able sought refuge in Ireland, then a sort of No-man's- 
Emigration land. A sheriff's writ could hardly cross 
to Ireland. ^he Channel, and the moss troopers were not 
there to harry them. They were welcomed as thrifty 
tenants upon the large, half-waste tracts held by Eng- 

1 Burnet: History of His Own Time, i. p. 229. 



156 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

lish land-owners. Bnt as the civilization of the island 
increased, its whilom obscurity ceased to shelter them. 
The same contest of argument and arms between the 
bishops and the Presbyterians, which had wasted Scot^ 
land, sprang up in Ireland. The bitterest theological 
controversies, diversified by passages at arms, occupied 
a whole generation. Finally it embittered the relations 
between land-owning Churchmen and the Presbyterian 
tenantry. The " Antrim Evictions " left thousands of 
them without home or shelter. In two years thirty 
thousand emigrated to America. 1 They found many of 
their kin already here. The prisoners taken at Dunbar 
and Bothwell Brig fifty years before had been sold as 
slaves to the plantations. 2 Scotch noblemen and gen- 
tlemen had bought large lands for their fellow-religion- 
ists in South Carolina. There were settlements of them 
Emigration in Virginia and Maryland, But at the open- 
to America. m g f ^he eighteenth century they began to 
come in like a flood. Boston, Philadelphia, and Charles- 
ton were the principal places of entry. Of these, Phila- 
delphia was the favorite. Whole congregations came, 
bringing their ministers with them. " In the first half 
of the century, Down, Antrim, Armagh, and Derry were 
I emptied." 3 In 1740 the immigration had reached twelve 

thousand a year to Philadelphia alone. 4 They halted 
but a little at the seaboard, but passed at once through 
the coast settlements, and took possession of the frontier. 
In the fertile valley of the Mohawk, the rich, rolling 

1 Craighead: Scotch and Irish Seeds in American Soil, p. 274. 

2 Ibid., p. em. 

3 Fronde: History of Ireland, vol. i. p 120. 

4 Hodge: History of the Presbyterian Church, p. 51. 



THE SCOTCH-IRISH. 157 

land of the Susquehanna, the long, trough-like valleys 
which lie among the eastern ranges of the Alleghanies, 
in the uplands of Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, 
they established their homes. They were a profoundly 
religious people. With a spirit like, and yet unlike, the 
Puritan settlers of New England, they have left their 
impress indelibly upon American religion. The upper- 
Hostiiityto mos t feeling in their minds, when they came, 
the Church. was hatred of Episcopacy, whether in its 
Romish or its English guise. Their fathers had chal- 
lenged it to mortal combat a century before, and in their 
own time the battle had gone against them. In the 
early years of the last century there were Scotch Pres- 
byterians living here whose ears had been cut off by 
" Kirke's lambs ; " whose fathers had been hung before 
their eyes for attending conventicles; who had worn the 
boot and thumbkins while Leslie stood by and jeered ; 
who had been hunted away from their burning homes 
by that polished gentleman and stanch Churchman, 
John Graham, of Claverhouse ; ministers who had been 
browbeaten by Irish bishops, and denied sympathy even 
by the gentle Jeremy Taylor, 1 had been turned out of 
their livings, fined, imprisoned, their ministerial office 
derided, the children of the marriages they celebrated 
pronounced bastards. A deep and sullen hatred of the 
Church which they regarded as the author of their 
wrongs was part of the furniture which they brought 
here with them. They were not likely to consider that 
they themselves were animated by a similar spirit, and, 
the opportunity being given, would have reversed the 

1 Craighead: p. 225. 



158 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

parts in the tragedy. In point of fact, the opportunity 
had not been given, and so things were as they were. 
The sober judgment of the world is now made up that 
the Church lost far more than she won by the methods 
then adopted. The fair-minded and candid Hallam 
t well says, " It was very possible that Episcopacy was of 

divine institution, but for this institution houses had 
been burned and fields laid waste, the gospel had been 
preached in the fields, and its ministers shot at their 
prayers. It was a religion of the boot and thumbscrew, 
which a good man must be very cold-blooded indeed if 
he did not hate and reject from the hands which offered 
it. For, after all, it is much more certain that God 
abhors cruelty and persecution than it is that He has 
set up bishops to have a superiority over presbyters." 1 
At the end of the period now before us, 2 the 

A cordon 

round the Scotch-Irish had established a cordon in the 
rear of the Church, whose seat was on the 
seaboard, reaching from Londonderry in New Hamp- 
shire, and following the foot-hills of the Alleghanies, to 
Georgia. They gave the religious tone to the life which 
was preparing to start with leaps and bounds across the 
mighty West. They made the first inroads into the 
wilderness "over the mountains." They planted in 
the new settlements the seed of hostility, or, at the best, 
dislike of the Church and her ways. They repaid with 
interest the grudge they owed her for her part in their 
fathers' quarrel. 

But at the same time they became, unwittingly, her 

1 Constitutional History, vol. iii. p. 435. 

2 From 1700 to the War of Independence. 



THE SCOTCH-IRISH. 159 

bulwark against the savage Indians and the Roman 
Catholic French. In the long and bloody French wars 
they bore the brunt. Behind the rampart they formed, 
the Church pursued her course in peace. When she 
had grown strong enough, in the next century, she 
moved out side by side with her ancient enemies, whose 
hostility had then abated, to possess the land of the 
West. For a while the Presbyterians stood sturdily 
with the Church against the enthusiasm of the " Great 
Awakening," and for the high Church and Sacramenta- 
rian ideas they had brought with them, 1 but in the end 
they succumbed to its influence. 2 From them 

Influence 

upon the rather than from the Puritans have come, for 
example, the popular judgment as to the 
proper observance of the Lord's Day, and the attitude 
of the individual Christian towards amusements and 
recreations. These notions have, in turn, unconsciously 
and unavoidably affected the practice of Church people 
in these regards. 3 The Church has caught from them 
also a certain seriousness of religious life and careful- 
ness of personal conduct, for which she owes a debt. 
On the other hand, this debt has been more than repaid 
by the company of recruits which they have constantly 
furnished to her membership. Bishops, priests, and 
laymen, the roll of whose names would fill a book, have 
come to the Episcopal Church from conviction of her 
better ways, who have never lost their kind good-will 
to their old Presbyterian home. 

1 The definitions of the Sacraments in the " Confession of Faith" are 
such as would satisfy the very highest Churchman. 

2 Briggs: American 

3 Canon XIV., 1789. 



loO THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE METHODISTS. 



We come now to notice the first of American born 
sects. Heretofore the successive waves of immigration 
which we have traced, each carried its own type of re- 
ligion, and threw it down as a deposit. These suc- 
cessive deposits constitute the primary ecclesiastical 
stratification of American life. Methodism shows itself 
not as an additional stratum, but as a great geological 
" fault " or break. As a sect it was organized and 
began its independent life here. Its growth 

The first & r & 

American and spread has probably been more rapid 
than that of any religious organization within 
the Christian era. It was launched from the deck of 
the Church of England. In its first stages its growth 
was from those who had always called themselves the 
Church's members. It was built, equipped, and manned 
by the Church's officers and crew. When it parted 
from her it bore away a multitude of her company. 
Methodism began its course in America at precisely 
that juncture when Episcopacy was at its lowest point, 
both in efficiency and in the good-will of the people ; 
at the time when the Church's hands were tied most 
rigidly by the bonds which bound her to the English 
state. While she was fettered and impotent, Methodism 
came, "a system energetic, migratory, itinerant, extern- 



THE METHODISTS. 161 

pore, like the population itself," 1 fitted itself at once to 
the new condition of things, and started immediately 
upon its extraordinary growth. 

What, then, was Methodism ? What is it ? How has 
it affected the Church in America? 

To answer the first of these questions, as in the case 
of Quakerism, the life and spirit of its founder must be 
examined. 

In 1729 thoughtful men in England were seriously 

alarmed at what seemed likely to prove a permanent 

eclipse of faith. 2 It appeared as though the 
Its origin. , , . , „ 

power of evil were about to triumph. The 

light of the Reformation, as they looked back upon it, 
seemed to them to have been only the flaring up of the 
torch before going out into darkness. Here and there 
the godly men who saw the evil of the day drew to- 
gether in little groups to plan and pray for better 
things. These little societies were jeered at as " Holy 
Clubs," " Sacramentarians," the "righteous." 3 Such a 
club existed at Oxford. Half a dozen fellows and 
undergraduates composed it. Its leading spirits were 
Charles and John Wesley, two clergymen of the 
Methodists Church of England. The purpose of the 
the first club was the revival of spiritual life in the 

"Ritualists." ■%.'-, 

Church. lo this end they observed with 
the utmost punctiliousness all the Church's rules and 
precepts. They were all Ritualists. 4 They were cir- 

1 Stevens: History of American Methodism, p. 22. 

2 Churchman's Life of Wesley, p. 14. 

3 IK p. 15. 

4 "The Oxford Methodists,, up to the time of their general dispersion, 
were aL Church of England Ritualists." Tyerman : The Oxford Meth- 



162 THE ENGLISH CHUKCH IN THE COLONIES. 

cumspect in life, studious, charitable, earnest-minded. 
Every morning and evening they spent an hour in 
private prayer. They communicated at Christ Church 
once a week. Every Wednesday and Friday they 
fasted till three o'clock. 1 They believed and taught the 
Ileal Presence in the Holy Eucharist ; used the mixed 
chalice ; the eastward position ; held to apostolic suc- 
cession ; baptism by immersion ; prayers for the dead ; 
and something which looked like invocation of Saints. 
They dreamed of a revival of the primitive Church as 
it was in the days of the fathers. For their punctilious- 
ness they were dubbed " Methodists." The masterful 
character of John Wesley quickly came to dominate 
the others. Except for his connection with this Church 
revival it would probably have been forgotten long ago. 
The ecclesiasticism of it left its impress upon one side 
of Wesley's character which it retained all his life ; but 
his following attached itself to him upon another side, 
which was later to be developed. 

When Oglethorpe had marshalled his motley col- 
ony for Georgia, he secured Charles Wesley for its 
TheWesi chaplain. His brother John determined to 
in Georgia. g a ]_ ng as a missionary to the Indians in 
the neighborhood of the new plantation. He was com- 
missioned by the S. P. G. for the work. The expedi- 
tion to which he was attached landed at Savannah in 
1736. The work among the Indians was quickly found 
to be impracticable, and no serious effort seems to have 
been made to pursue it. In its default, Wesley became 
the minister in charge of Christ Church, Savannah. 

• Tyerman: The Oxford Methodists, pp. vi, 66. 



THE METHODISTS. 163 

There he began at once to carry into practice his pro- 
nounced ideas of church order and discipline. He 
multiplied services ; emphasized the fast and feast 
days of the Church ; refused to allow parents to stand, 
and insisted that none but communicants could be 
sponsors ; insisted upon baptism by immersion as being 
the primitive mode ; repelled from the Holy Commun- 
ion all who had not been baptized by an episcopally 
ordained minister ; insisted upon making priestly inqui- 
sition into the lives of all who offered to come to the 
Lord's Table. No place more ill adapted to his 
rubrical rigor could have been found than the Georgia 
colony was. He quickly estranged his people by his 
malapropos zeal. From estrangement, the feeling 
against him soon passed into active hostility. This 
was carried to its summit by Wesley's folly in con- 
nection with a young woman of his parish. He be- 
came enamoured of a Miss Hopke, declared his love, 
Avas kindly received, and believed that Miss Hopke had 
promised to marry him. She, however, 

John Wesley L J 

and Miss thought differently, and married another 
man. Wesley, instead of pocketing his 
chagrin like a man, chose to bear himself in the matter 
like a priest. If he was not the young lady's husband, 
he was at any rate her spiritual pastor and master. In 
this latter capacity he determined to discipline her for 
the affront which she had put upon him as a man. He 
excommunicated her for the double-dealing which he 
alleged and believed she had been guilty of in the affair. 
His conduct in the premises was more than the Savan- 
nah people, already irritated against him, could endure. 



164 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

Miss Hopke's uncle, Mr. Causten, a rich and prominent 
citizen, and a hot-tempered and vindictive man, took up 
her quarrel, and led the popular anger against Wesley. 
The storm was too fierce to stand against. Wesley was 
compelled to flee. In company with a single friend, he 
escaped through the swamps, lost his way, lay down 
exhausted, was resuscitated by the exhibition of a piece 
of gingerbread which his friend had fortunately carried 
with him, made his way, more dead than alive, to 
Beaufort, and sailed away to England. 

On his way out to Georgia there had chanced to be a 
little band of Moravians on the same ship with him. 
Wesley had been deeply impressed with the 
the Mora- manner and spirit of their religious life. 
They had seemed to possess a secret of 
spiritual peace which he had not. They invited him, 
if ever he should have the opportunity, to visit the 
home of their Church at Hernhutt. When he went 
back to England, having failed to do his work among 
the Indians, and more than failed with the Savannah 
whites, disappointed and discredited, he made the 
intended visit. He .found the Moravians to be of his 
spiritual kin. They recommended him to the friend- 
si lip of one of their own members, Peter Bohler, then 
living in London. The mystical, Moravian idea that 
the religious life is in its essence the consciousness of 
God's presence in the soul, was not unfamiliar to 
Wesley. He had striven to realize this communion 
through Sacraments and observances while he belonged 
to the "Holy Club." His intimate association with that 
nonjuring Churchman, William Law, had fixed the 



THE METHODISTS. 165 

same idea deeper in his mind. 1 But through his inter- 
course with Bohler 2 he was led to that great experience 
which is the key not only to Wesley's work and char- 
acter, but also to that great fabric which he builded. 

He records that on the 24th of May, 1738, 
Wesley's J 

"conver- while reading Luther's Introduction to the 

Romans, he was suddenly " converted." 
He had been for more than a. dozen years a priest and 
preacher, a missionary and a pastor, but, according to 
the judgment which he ever afterward adhered to, he had 
never been a Christian. The absolute necessity of con- 
scious " conversion " became from that time the centre 
of his system. " By it," he saj^s, " I mean an inward 
impression of the soul whereby the Spirit of God imme- 
diately and directly witnesses to my spirit that I am a 
child of God." 3 He was not the first who believed and 
taught the same thing, but he was the first who had 
the power of sustained enthusiasm, the faculty of man- 
aging men, the genius for organization, which were able 
to build up about this central tenet a mighty ecclesias- 
tical empire. 

The condition of society which he confronted was one 
which would have appalled a man not sustained by a 
Desperate profound belief in God's presence with him. 

reif ionhx° f At tlie middle of the eighteenth century, 
England. England touched, probably, the lowest moral 
and religious point in her history. During more than 
a century she had been steadily drained of her most 



1 Tyerman: Life of Wesley, vol. i. p. 88. 

2 Stevens: History of American Methodism, p. 27. 
» lb. p. 192. 



166 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

vigorous life. The Puritan emigration had carried 
away tens of thousands of her children whose religion, 
if hard and gloomy, was at any rate real. The deporta- 
tion of the Quakers had emptied England of enthu- 
siasm. The old Elizabethan Churchmanship was with- 
drawn into the secluded haunts of the nonjurors. The 
most virile and wholesome of her children had long 
since gone to the New World. What was left was inert, 
conventional, weak, helpless, like a depleted system, 
to resist the inroads of miasma. The miasma had 
already risen in the form of the cold and 

Deism. J 

barren deism which then possessed the pop- 
ular mind. Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Hume, and 
Tyndal were the teachers who had the public ear. 
The sordid, debauching reign of the Georges had been 
established, and its results had begun to show. The 
moralities, the very decencies of life, were forgotten. 
Blasphemy became the mark of a gentleman. 1 To 
" swear like a lord " was the height of the commoner's 
ambition. New and strange oaths showed a fertile wit. 
Gambling w^as the serious business of the court, and 
the unconcealed recreation of the people. Hogarth 
shows the fine gentleman meditating suicide after being 
ruined at play, and the street gamins playing at chuck- 
farthing on the flat tombstones of St. Paul's Church- 
yard. Gin was invented, and the street-signs announced 
unblushingly, that the passer-by could get " drunk for 
. , . . a penny, drunk, with clean straw, for two- 

Lubricity. r J 

pence." The lubricity of the age matched 
its frivolity. Most of its literature is now, happily, un- 

1 Hore: Eighteen Centuries of the Church in England, p. 455. 



THE METHODISTS. 167 

readable. Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne have not been 
able even by their genius to rescue it from its dirt. In 
a literature where Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, Rod- 
erick Random, and Tristram Shandy are the best, what 
must the worst be ? Montesquieu says of the English 
of that day, " They have no religion." The age's own 
judgment of itself appears in the proposal of a parlia- 
mentary bill, offered half in jest and wholly in earnest, 
" that the word not should be struck out where it 
occurs in the Commandments, and inserted in the 
Creeds ! " 

Church abuses kept pace with civil ones. A few rich 
and favored clergy monopolized the livings, and left the 
Ecciesiasti- mas ^ of the clergy to eke out a miserable 
cai abuses. livelihood by questionable services to godless 
patrons, 1 or as " Fleet parsons." 2 The clergy were held 
in popular contempt, and were content to be so. 3 A 
mitre was schemed for, bribed for, begged for, without 
sense of shame. 4 When obtained it was prized for the 
earthly honor it brought, and not for the duty it entailed. 
Bishops visited their dioceses when it comported with 
their more serious duties at court. A Welsh bishop 
who held his see for years never saw it in his life. 
Confirmations, infrequently held, brought together the 
young people from miles around for a debauch. Thack- 
eray violates no probabilities when he presents the 
Bishop of Bath and Wells bowing and smirking in the 

1 Abbey and Overton: Church of England in the Eighteenth Century, 
vol. ii. p. 16. 

2 lb. ii. p. 19. 

3 lb. ii. p. 20. 

4 lb. ii. p. 26. 



168 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IX THE COLONIES. 

pump-room before the painted, patched, and powdered 
old Duchess of Yarmouth, the king's mistress. 1 What 
was not probable in a church in which the man who 
" wept over a dead donkey and left his own mother to 
starve," received preferment for his " Sentimental Trav- 
eller " ? The Church in that century had great men, 
great scholars, great bishops, but they pursued their 
work and lived their lives apart from the people. War- 
burton, Wake, Bull, Butler, Waterland, and Sherlock 
have left their mark upon the generations since, but 
failed to redeem the one in which they lived. 2 This 
was the England which the newly converted Wesley 
and his co-worker Whitefield confronted. What could 
be done with it? How could it be brought to a sense 
of God and to righteousness of life ? 

The purpose they set before themselves was a simple 
one. It was not to introduce any machinery of moral 
The Method- education or scheme of reformation, but to 
ists' purpose. \j T [ U g eacn individual soul into conscious 
intercourse with God. No project was ever conceived 
which appeared more Quixotic. But they set about the 
task, and measurably accomplished it. They began 
with the most unpromising. They preached to the 

1 Whitefield the drunkards, swearers, and harlots of Drury 

Wesley ST* Laiie ' t0 the bmtalized tin-miners of Corn- 
organizer, wall, to the keelmen at Newcastle, to the 
begrimed colliers in Kingswood and Staffordshire. 
About Whitefield especially the people crowded by the 
thousand. Five, ten, twenty, thirty thousand people in 

1 The Virginians. 

2 Abbey and Overton: vol. ii. p. 54. 



THE METHODISTS. 169 

a single congregation listened to his marvellous voice. 
He preached all afternoon, and the people refused to 
disperse when darkness fell. A friend "held a torch 
beside him, so that he could see his Bible, and he 
preached all night; when day broke, ten thousand 
people were standing and kneeling about him." The 
" converted " were quickly numbered by the thousand. 
Charles Wesley, the sweet singer, set their deep emo- 
tions to hymns. John Wesley, the born organizer and 
administrator, gathered together the isolated individuals, 
set them in " classes," set over each class a "leader," 
selected earnest and fluent men, and sent them out to 
travel over "circuits," as Wickliff had done centuries 
before with his " poor preachers." He at once became 
the head and centre of the movement, and remained so 
till it broke cut of his hands in America. 

It spread in his own lifetime to Scotland, Ireland, 
the West Indies, France, and to America. 

Why did not the Church, to which all the Methodist 
leaders belonged, take it up and thank God for it ? This 
question has been often asked. The answer is to be 
found in its central principle of conscious conversion. 
No bishop or priest could join in the Methodist move- 
ment without either openly declaring that he had had 
the emotional experience demanded as a condition pre- 
cedent, — a declaration which the majority of Christian 
men cannot honestly make, — or else openly confessing 
that he had till that time been outside of the very king- 
dom of God, — a confession which still fewer will admit. 1 

1 The whole attitude of the Church towards Methodism is set out with 
most admirable candor and intelligence by Abbey : English Church and 
Bishops in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. pp. 288-291. 



170 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

The movement reached America in 1767. In that 
year the first Methodist society was collected in New 
Cams to York. 1 The " Great Awakening," which was 

America. then at its greatest activity, had prepared the 
way for it. Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley were at 
f one as to the nature of personal religion ; but Edwards 

was a philosopher, while Wesley was pre-eminently an 
organizer and a man of affairs. His Methodist machin- 
ery took up and moulded the converts of the Edwards 
movement. 

But Methodism had a relation to Episcopacy which 
the " Great Awakening " had not. Whitefield, who 
represented Wesley here, was a priest of the Church. 
Those whom he baptized were made thereby mem- 
bers of the Church of England. The Methodist 
. , ,. societies used the Book of Common Prayer 

Methodists J 

still within in their services, and their people all looked 
to the Church for the administration of the 
Sacraments. 2 Up to this point Methodism was simply 
a society within the Church. If the Church here had 
been organized, and possessed bishops who could have 
ordained ministers fast enough to keep pace with the 
rapidly multiplying Methodist societies, they would in 
all probability have remained within her boundaries. 
Wesley besought Lowth, Bishop of London, to ordain 
at least two priests who could administer the Sacraments 
to American Methodists. It is doubtful if any single 
action of a bishop has ever been more fruitful for evil 
than his refusal. At the opening of the Revolutionary 



McMaster: History of the People of United States, vol. i. p. 56. 
Stevens: History of American Methodism, p. 75. 



THE METHODISTS. 171 

War the Wesleyans had increased to " more than eighty 
travelling preachers, many local preachers, hundreds of 
class leaders and exhorters, thousands of members, and 
ten thousands of regular hearers/' 1 These all consid- 
ered themselves to be within the Church, and were so 
considered both by Wesley and the clergy here. 2 But the 
great spreading branch grew too heavy to be sustained 
by the slender stem of the American Church. When 
Wesley despaired of securing clergy from the Bishop of 
London, in whose jurisdiction the American Methodists 
The Method- were ? ne sen ^ Coke and Asbury to take over- 
ist " bishops." s ight of them as "superintendents." When 
they came they saw the situation more clearly than 
their patriarch could see it from beyond the sea. He 
had constructed a Frankenstein machine, which he 
was not able single-handed to control. The superin- 
tendents were not restrained by the same high Church- 
manship which Wesley had always retained side by 
side with his enthusiasm. They assumed the functions 
and titles of bishops, organized the scattered societies 
into the compact empire which Methodism still is, cut 
the strained ligature which bound it to the Church, 
started the new sect upon its independent way, and 
made a new rent in the garment of the Lord. They led 
out of the Church in America probably one hundred 
thousand souls. Wesley sat at home and sent out 
adjurations and anathemas after his recreant super- 
intendents, but it was too late. Their action was 
irretrievable. By his laying the whole weight of the 

1 Stevens : p. 181. 

2 lb. p. 75. 



172 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IX THE COLONIES. 

Christian system upon a single point, he had destroyed 
the "proportion of the Faith." The portion of the 
Church Avhich depended from that point broke away 
by its own weight. 

The loss has been unspeakable to both sections. The 
Church in America lost the most active part of its mem- 
The loss by bership at the very time when it was about 
separation. to neec [ them most. Methodism lost the 
balanced order, the ethical strenuousness, the broad 
liberality and wholesome reasonableness, which have 
through good and evil been the possession of the 
Church. 



THE EPISCOPATE. 173 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE EPISCOPATE. 

Strictly speaking, the Episcopal Church was not 
present in America as an organized body until after 
the Revolutionary War. Previous to that time, accord- 
ing to the generally accepted definition, there was here 
only the material out of which it was afterward to be 
constructed. 

Two fundamentally different theories concerning the 
nature of the Church are now extant. 

The first is the one which is generally entertained in 
the United States. To a large majority of persons it 
Two theories seems so palpably true and reasonable that 
of the Church. ^ s opposite appears grotesque. It is that a 
church, like a state, is built up from below. The mate- 
rials from which it is constructed are separate individ- 
uals, who have given in their adhesion to Jesus Christ 
by an avowed act of faith. Having established their 
Christianity as individuals, each independently of the 
other, they draw together because they are like-minded, 
and band themselves into a society which becomes a 
Church. It is open to them to constitute this society 
in whatever fashion they see fit. The Holy Scriptures 
are conceived to bs silent upon the whole question of 
organization, presumably with the intention of leaving 
men free to follow their own judgments here. The 



174 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

whole power of ecclesiastical government rests upon 
the consent of the governed. It is a question of votes. 
By a consensus of opinion and action such a society 
may make such regulations as it chooses ; may be 
monarchical, republican, or absolute ; may ordain such 
and such kinds of officers as it may determine; may 
call its officers by any name and may assign to them 
any duties it will ; and may remove and depose them 
at pleasure. The individuals may construct such an 
ecclesiastical machine as they think will be most effi- 
cient, and then may reasonably expect that the Holy 
Spirit will lodge in it as its motive power. This is the 
popular notion and the one generally accepted by Prot- 
estantism. 

The other theory is that the Church is organized from 
the summit downward ; that the authority which per- 
tains to it, and the grace which flows through it, are 
things which do not depend upon the votes of its units ; 
that men do not establish their Christianity as isolated 
souls, but that the Church is concerned even in the 
original transaction by the individual. 1 They who hold 
to this theory conceive that the essential features of 
the Church's structure have been long since settled. 
Whether they might not be changed under the stress 
of an absolute necessity, is a question they do not seri- 
ously ask. They wait for such a demonstrable neces- 
sity to appear, and assert that it never yet has appeared. 
They declare that " it is evident to all men diligently 
reading the Holy Scriptures and ancient Authors, that 
from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders 
of Ministers in Christ's Church, — Bishops, Priests, 

1 " It [the Holy Spirit] was given corporately, so that they who received 
it realized at once a unity which preceded any individual action of their 
own."— Lux Mundi. New York : E. & J. B. Young & Co., 1890, p. 37:3. 



THE EPISCOPATE. 175 

and Deacons." 1 While they do not assert that this 
arrangement is the result of a categorical command 
of God, still they hold it to be of so potent obligation 
that it may not be changed except for weightier reasons 
than have ever yet appeared. This conception of the 
Church is of the essence of Episcopacy. Overwhelmed 
as it is by popular vote in the United States, it still is 
the belief held and acted upon by five-sixths of the 
Christian world. 

Its acceptance by the members of the English Church 
in colonial times, put them at an incalculable disadvan- 
Pra&ticai dis- tage as compared with their fellow-colonists, 
advantage of j;he Church was here, as Richard complained 

th3 Church's \ L 

theory. that he had been sent into the world, " scarce 

half made up." An Episcopal Church without a Bishop 
is as a body without a head. The scattered parishes 
were as the beads of a rosary in which the string is cut, 
leaving the cross, which should be pendent, to fall 
helpless upon the ground. At the first settlement of the 
country the then Bishop of London had chanced to be 
a stockholder and a member of council in the " Virginia 
Company." This fact gave him a vague, advisory 
oversight of its affairs. His successors for nearly a 
century followed his example until it became a pre- 
scriptive right of that see. Bishop Compton in 1703 
had it confirmed to him and his successors by an 
" Order in Council." 2 But the supervision which the 
Bishop of London could give to churches farther away 
than the heart of Australia now is, was worth but little. 

1 Prayer-Book: Preface to Ordinal. 

2 Abbey: English Church and its Bishops, vol. i. p. 82. 



176 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

No order could be guaranteed. Discipline could not be 
maintained. Confirmation was a physical impossibility. 
But it was in regard to ordination that the evil of the 
situation made itself most keenly felt. Other churches 
were here with their complete equipment. 

Ordination . 

and disci- When a sufficient number of Presbyterians 
found themselves living together in a remote 
settlement, they chose a man for pastor, and at the 
most he need not leave the colony to find a Presbytery 
in session who could lay hands on him. If they were 
Baptists or Independents they chose a man, and either 
invited two or three neighboring ministers to join with 
them, or, in default of that, ordained him themselves. 
When a Quaker meeting grew too large it swarmed like 
a hive of bees, and the younger swarm set up for itself. 
The Roman Catholics and the Churchmen were help- 
less. For a hundred and seventy-five years the Church 
in America was a Japhet in search of a father. The 
chapter now before us is the story of the long, weari- 
some, pitiful, despairing effort to obtain that office 
without which the Church could not live. 

As early as 1638 Archbishop Laud had a plan 1 to 

send out a bishop to New England avIio might keep as 

tight a hand over the Puritans there as he 

Early efforts & 

to obtain the was doing over their brethren at home. But 
the triumph of Parliament, the overthrow of 
the king, and the loss of his own head prevented his 
carrying it into effect. 

During the Commonwealth, of course, nothing could 
be expected in the colonies from a Church that was at 
its last gasp at home. 

1 Hawkins: Historical Notices, London, 1845, p. 376. 



THE EPISCOPATE. 177 

After the Restoration the Lord Chancellor Clarendon 1 
undertook a similar project in Virginia, but a change of 
ministry and the indifference of the dissolute king 
brought it to naught. 

Tenison and Seeker, Archbishops of Canterbury, and 
Compton, Bishop of London, labored often and vainly to 
secure the same end. 

From this side of the water the cry for a bishop was 
never silent. We have already noticed the scheme pro- 
posed by Chaplain Miller at the time of the English 
capture of New York. So far as any difficulty from 
this side was concerned, his plan was entirely feasible. 
It was to set aside " the king's farm " in New York, for 
the support of a suffragan of the Bishop of London, 
who should have jurisdiction in all America. 

So soon as the first hardships of settlement were past 
and the Church really began to grow, the need became 
imperative. 

When Keith and Talbot, the first missionaries of the 
S. P. G., had completed the tour of investigation which 
The need of it their instructions made their duty, they re- 
patent, ported that the primary need was bishops. 
Talbot writes to the Society, in 1702, 2 " I don't doubt 
that some good man with one hundred pounds a year 
would do the Church more service than with a coach 
and six a hundred years hence." Two years later he 
wrote to his friend Keith, " Mr. John Lillingston de- 
signs, it seems, to go to England next year. He seems 
to be the fittest person that America affords for the 



1 Hawkins : Historical Notices, p. 376. 

2 MSS. Letters, vol. xi. p. 335. 



178 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

office of a suffragan. Several of the clergy, both of 
this province and of Maryland, have said they would 
pay their tenths to him as the vice-gerent of my Lord 
of London, whereby the Bishop of America might have 
. as honorable provision as some in Europe." 

In a letter to the secretary of the S. P. G., he speaks 
with great plainness, urging sharply that when the 
Apostles heard that Samaria had received the Word of 
God, they sent Peter and John that they might receive 
the Holy Ghost, not standing upon any question of 
salary ; that when they heard the Word was preached at 
Antioch they sent there Paul and Barnabas ; that when 
Paul did only dream that a man wanted him in Mace- 
donia, he went all so fast; — "but here we have been 
calling these so many years, and you will not hear, or 
will not answer, which is the same thing." He does 
not undertake to prophesy, but there is such a thing as 
the kingdom " being taken away from them who will 
not use it, and given to them who will ! " 

A convocation of fourteen clergymen at Burlington, 
N. J., in 1705, signed a petition to the Archbishop, 
Grsatoppor- representing that many Lutheran and Inde- 
mnities lost, pendent Ministers were ready to conform if a 
Bishop were here to ordain them. 1 

In 1709 the officers of the S. P. G. presented a memo- 
rial to Queen Anne begging that a colonial bishopric 
might be endowed out of the proceeds of the lands 
ceded by the Council of Utrecht, 2 but the death of the 
queen put an end to the project. 

1 MSS. Letters, vol. xi. p. 335. 

2 Abbey: English Church and Bishops, vol. i. p. 87. 
Beardsley: Life of Johnson, p. 15. 



THE EPISCOPATE. 179 

The same year, Governor Nicholson of Maryland 
wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury that " unless bish- 
ops can be had, the Church will surely decline." 

In 1715, the S. P. G. laid before George I. a well- 
digested scheme for the same purpose. It was proposed 
The s. p. G.'s that four bishops should be consecrated, one 
plan. £ or Barbacloes, one for Jamaica, one to have 

his seat at Burlington, N. J., and another at Williams- 
burg, Va. The Northern Diocese was to include all the 
settlements east of the Delaware, extending to New- 
foundland ; the Southern Diocese having all west of the 
Delaware, and reaching to the Spanish possessions. 
They represented that the college at Williamsburg 
would provide a place for the one, and that they had 
purchased, for six hundred pounds, a house and grounds 
at Burlington for the other. Just then the Scotch re- 
bellion broke out, and the High Church clergy showed 
so much sympathy for the Stuart line that the King and 
his minister, Walpole, would hear nothing further about 
the Church's affairs. 1 With a lingering hope in the 
ultimate fulfilment of the plan, Bishop Tenison left one 
thousand pounds in his will for the American part of it. 

In 1765 a still more promising plan was devised 
on this side of the sea. In southern Pennsylvania 
The Pennsvi- there were rich manors which had been re- 
vaniapian. ser ved for the Duke of York. They were 
not occupied by anybody who could show good title. 
In the Delaware River were also sundry islands, occu- 
pied in part by squatters, but which were not included 
in Penn's grant. These together would provide ample 

i MSS. Letters, vol. x. p. 28. 



180 THE ENGLISH CHURCH O THE COLONIES. 

endowment for a bishopric, and their resumption for 
that purpose would disturb no equities. 1 Nothing came 
of it. 

Nothing came of the petition in which the clergy of 
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York all joined. 2 
Nothing came of the appeals of Cutler and Johnson, and 
the Commissaries, and fifty others who pleaded for the 
Episcopate. They represented with truth that for the 
lack of it the Church was falling into disorder and dis- 
grace ; that dissenting ministers in plenty were ready 
to conform, but were not willing to cross the sea for 
ordination ; that of those who had crossed, one-fourth, 
by actual count, had been lost at sea, captured by 
pirates, shipwrecked, or died of smallpox in England. 
But their prayers, joined with those of the officers of 
the S. P. G., of Tenison, Compton, and Seeker, had 
been fruitless, — and why? Why was an action appar- 
ently so easily done, so desired by the parties concerned, 
and so essential to the Church's welfare, persistently 
refused ? 

The fundamental reason was that same entanglement 
of Church with State which had nearly choked out all 
Reasons of spiritual life. The Church of England, par- 
the failure, alyzed by this fatal alliance, had lost the power 
not only to act but even to think for herself. But even 
if she had had the power to do her duty to her far-away 
children, she, for the most part, had neither the knowl- 
edge nor the good-will requisite. British ignorance of 
American affairs is even now a standing jest. That 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Pa. p. 373. 

2 Smith: Life of Dr. William Smith, vol. i. p. 270. 



THE EPISCOPATE. 181 

density which cannot perceive an American witticism, 
which looks for buffalo about the suburbs of New York 
and wild Indians in the streets of Chicago, two hundred 
years ago was still more hopeless. The English piqued 
themselves upon their ignorance and indifference. A 
few bishops and agents of the S. P. G., and the vulgar 
merchants of the City, were fairly well informed ; but, 
as a rule, the people gave no thought to the plantations. 
Especially were they indifferent to matters pertaining 
to the Church. 1 That sense of personal responsibility 
for the progress of the body, which marks the member- 
ship of a voluntary Church, is not to be expected in an 
Establishment. In it it is the business of the official 
class to make plans and execute them. Could English- 
men have realized at all the mighty destiny of the then 
neglected colonies, they would, of course, have acted 
differently towards them ; but this sort of knowledge is 
too much to expect of any generation. As the feeling 
then was, the suggestion of a bishop for the colonies 
seemed to the ordinary mind the most grotesque of 
The current incongruities. It was as though a serious 
theScopal P ro P osal nad been made to send a sword of 
office. state to the King of the Cannibal Islands, or 

a coach and six to Prester John. The current con- 
ceptions of what a bishop was, and what a " planta- 
tion " was, were two notions which would not fit 
together. A bishop was a dignitary, a peer, a being 
of exalted state, as much for show as for use, but indis- 
pensable to the right constitution of things, — in Eng- 
land. The inodern idea of an Apostolic Bishop was not 

1 White: Memoirs, New York, 1880, p. 75. 



182 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

thinkable. Such a creature had not been seen for so 
many centuries that his memory had faded out. They 
were not capable of imagining a bishop who had no 
connection with the State, no artificial dignity, simply 
an Apostolic man, going about like Selwyn or Chase, 
t in the humblest guise, without state or ceremonial or 

guaranteed livelihood even, mindful of his work for 
Christ and His Church. The officer which the Ameri- 
can Church asked was an official which the English 
Churchmen could not then picture to themselves. 

To this difficulty of the understanding, the moral 
darkness of the eighteenth century added a difficulty of 
spirit. The great men of the Church were writing 
books ; the little men were scheming for preferment ; 
the mass was careless of the whole matter. 1 Besides 
this there was the long-continued feeling of distrust of 
Churchmen, entertained by the civil power. 2 To the 
secular official's way of thinking, there were too many 
bishops already. " Priestcraft " was one of the cries of 
the day. No action would be permitted, if politicians 
could help it, which would even seem to be in the 
interest of the sacerdotal order. 

These \vere the obstacles in the mother country, — 

1 ignorance, indifference, prejudice, political entangle- 

ments, and secular iealousies. By the time 
Fear of the ' _ J J 

\ office in th3 they were in the way of being overcome^ 

colonies. ', , _ . , , 

a dangerous opposition to Episcopacy had 
developed in the colonies themselves. 3 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Mass. p. 075. 

1 Abbey and Overton: Englisb Church in Eighteenth Century, vol. i 
pp. 39, 40. 

2 Abbey: Englisb Church and its Bishops, vol. i. pp. 35, 30. 
" Baird: Religion in America, o. 182. 



THE EPISCOPATE. 183 

The idea of an ultimate separation from England, or, 
rather, of securing a home rule for the colonies, began 
to be entertained at a much earlier date than is generally 
supposed. 1 Indeed it was present to some 
thought of minds from the very first. It was openly 
separation. c ] iar g ec [ against the colonies, during the long 
contests over their charters, that their purpose was to 
break away entirely from English authority. It cannot 
be said that this was their purpose in the way of being 
before their minds in the shape of a definite design ; 
but it was in the form of a dream which many loved 
to entertain. In truth the war for independence became 
a future certainty the day the first permanent settle- 
ment was made. The necessity was in the situation. 
Some saw it early ; some saw it clearly ; but all felt it 
instinctively. Out of this instinct arose the strenuous 
opposition which the great body of colonists showed to 
the introduction of the Episcopate. It commenced to 
manifest itself as soon as the dream of ultimate separa- 
tion began to be clearly defined, and continued until 
separation became a fact, when it suddenly ceased. 

The ground of the opposition was twofold, political 
and ecclesiastical. In form the long controversy was a 
discussion concerning the right and scriptural organiza- 
tion of the Church ; but in spirit it was a political 
contest. " The whole body of the Puritans were deter- 
mined to resist the introduction of bishops into America. 
They feared lest these might use all the authority of 



1 Sabine: Loyalists of the American Revolution, vol. i. p. 65. 

1 Abbey: English Church and Bishops, vol. i. p. 88. 

1 Caswall: The American Church and the American Union, p. 73. 



184 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

the Crown to destroy Puritanism and establish Preh 
acy." 1 The primary objection to bishops was that they 
were officers of the Crown ; opposition to them as being 
officials unknown to Scripture and the primitive Church 
was an after-thought. No question was discussed in 
colonial times which so seriously enlisted the inter- 
est of the people as did this one. The controversy 
raged intermittently for seventy years. Checkly, 
Johnson, Beach, Apthorp, and Chandler maintained 
the Church's side. 2 They were answered by Dick- 
inson, Mayhew, Chauncey, and a hundred others, from 
the Dissenters' standpoint. Pamphlets, broadsides, let- 
ters, newspaper skits, " Questions Stated," " Replies 
to Questions Stated," and " Answers to Replies to 
Questions Stated," kept the printers busy for years. 

It is much the custom for Church writers to assume 
that the opposition to the Episcopate was but the out- 
come of the wanton and gratuitous enmity of those 
who hated the Church. Both charity and fact con- 
demn this assumption. The situation being what it 
then was, there was good and substantial ground for 
opposition. 

The fundamental political question which was opened 

Iwhen the original charters were withdrawn, 
status of the and which remained open till the Revolu- 
tion, was: What is the legal status of the 
colonies ? 3 Were they an integral part of the kingdom ? 

1 Briggs: American Presbyterianism, p. 143. 

2 White : Memoirs, p. 73. 

8 Smith: History of New York, pp. 220-228. 

3 Sabine: Loyalists of the Revolution, vol. i. p. 24. 

3 McMaster: History of the United States, vol. i. p. 33. 



THE EPISCOPATE. 185 

Or did their charters give them an autonomy? These 
two contentions were the opposite poles of the dispute. 
If the former were the true principle, then English law 
and custom were of obligation at every point where 
they were not estopped by the distinct provision of a 
charter. Now the Church Establishment was part and 
parcel of the English law. It was seriously contended 
that it was ipso facto established here also ; " that the 
constitutional laws of the mother country, antecedent 
to the legislatures of our own, are binding upon us ; 
and therefore at the planting of the colony the English 
religious Establishment immediately took place ; sec- 
ondly, that the Act which established the Episcopal 
Church in South Britain, previous to the union of Eng- 
land and Scotland, extended to and equally affected all 
the colonies." 1 If this contention of Churchmen were 
well founded, then bishops, if they came here at all, 
would come with the whole power of English law 
behind them. No matter what assurances they might 
give that they had only spiritual purposes in view, 
they would still be invested with secular powers which 
they could not renounce if they wanted to ; and human 
nature being what it is, they could not be trusted to 
confine themselves to spiritual weapons while they 
would have such potent secular ones ready to hand. 
John Adams's " ^ Parliament can tax us," says John 
opinion. Adams, "they can establish the Church of 

England with all its creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies, 
and tithes, and prohibit all other Churches as conventi- 
cles and schism shops." 2 Adams was clearly right ; at 

1 Smith: History of New York, p. 220. 

2 John Adams: Works, vol. x. p. 287. 



186 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

any rate lie expressed the honest belief of the great 
majority on both sides of the question. Dr. Chandler's 
sincerity is not to be questioned when he asserted that 
" the bishops proposed were to have no temporal power, 
no maintenance from the colonies, to be confined to the 
exercise of their spiritual functions only." x This was 
all very well, but who was to guarantee that the 
bishops, if they came, would take the same view of 
the case? And if they should take a different view, 
what, upon the Tory theory of the political status, was 
to hinder them from carrying it out to the discomfiture 
of dissenters ? The Episcopal advocates 

Fear of the . - ' 

Episcopate themselves let out unconsciously that the 
bishop they had in mind was not just the 
meek and apostolic creature described. Every scheme 
proposed began with a "sufficient provision for his 
dignified maintenance." The power which he would 
be to allay political disaffection, is constantly dwelt 
upon in the letters of the Venerable Society's mis- 
sionaries. 2 " The King is thoroughly sensible that the 
Episcopalians are his best friends." 3 The clergy here 
were careful to sustain this conviction of the King. 
The people generally knew this to be the case. They 
feared, and under the circumstances had reason to fear, 
the consequences which might flow from allowing the 
Church to set up her powerful machinery here in its 
entirety. This apprehension was not confined to dis- 
senters or even Church laymen. In 1771, only twelve 
out of the one hundred clergy in Virginia joined in 

1 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, p. 7-3. 

2 Perry: Historical Collections, passim. 
8 Abbey: English Church and Bishops, vol. i. p. 364. 



THE EPISCOPATE. 187 

a petition to the Crown for an American bishop. A 
larger convention than the one which adopted the 
measure rejected it, and four of them sent their pro- 
test against it to the Virginia House of Burgesses, — 
almost all of which were Churchmen, — and received the 
formal thanks of the House for their patriotic action. 1 
Few clergy indeed sympathized with these four, but the 
significant thing is that there were any such. 

The truth would seem to be, that in the face of the 
dissenting opposition, the support which the opposition 
Bishops im- received from the dissenters and the colonial 
aftefthV 111 a £ ents in England, the indifference of the 
Eevoiution. American laity, the apathy of the English 
clergy, and the impotence of the bishops who moved 
in the matter, there was no time, from the opening of 
the eighteenth century till the close of the Revolution, 
when it would have been possible to have a bishop 
consecrated for America. 2 

This was the judgment to which the clergy them- 
selves reluctantly came. 3 Some among them despaired 
entirely. Some began to turn their thoughts elsewhere 
— to the Swedish or Moravian Church. Not a few of the 
clergy in the Middle and Southern colonies entertained 
the idea of an " Independent Episcopal Church." Dr. 
id^aofan Smith wrote to the Bishop of London in 

"independ- 1776, "The rest are a mixed sort, chiefly for 
ent Church-" 

an Independent Church of England — a 

strange sort of church indeed ! But the notion gains 

too much ground here even among the clergy. I believe 

1 White : Memoirs, p. 76. 

2 White: Memoirs,, p. 75. 

8 Smith.: Li:'c cf Dr. Smith, vol. i. p. 387. 



188 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

your lordship will perceive something of this sort not 
altogether pleasing if the resolves of a majority of the 
last Jersey Convention come before you, against commis- 
saries, and preferring thereto a kind of presbyterian or 
synodical self-delegated government by conventions." 1 
This idea was developed by Dr. White of Philadelphia, 
in 1782, in his celebrated pamphlet, "The Case of the 
Episcopal Churches Considered." 2 Dr. White did not 
Dr white's s P ea k for himself alone, by any means, when 
P lan - he proposed his plan. His scheme assumed 

that the hope of obtaining the Episcopate from Eng- 
land had been demonstrated to be impossible, and had 
been abandoned. In that case there seemed to him to 
remain but the alternatives of permanent anarchy, or 
such an organization as could be made out of the mate- 
rials present. He proposed that (a) the clergy and lay 
delegates from the parishes, in definite districts to be 
defined, should combine in an organization which might 
be called a Diocese or a Synod or what not; (5) that 
these organizations should, at the outset, record their 
attachment to Episcopacy, and their determination to 
secure it when God should open the way thereto ; (<?) 
that, meanwhile, the Church should proceed in presbyte- 
rial fashion, inasmuch as the Church contemplated 
would only possess presbyters. He justified his pro- 
posal by the plea of imperious necessity; and by the 
fact that the Church of England had never denied the 
validity of non-Episcopal orders, and had recognized 
them under a less exigent need. 3 

1 Smith: Life of Dr. Smith, vol. i. p. 401. 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Pa. p. 414. 

2 White: Memoirs, p. 99. 

3 White: Memoirs, p. 101, note. 



THE EPISCOPATE. 189 

The popular judgment concerning the matter was 
fairly stated by Benjamin Franklin, who expressed his 
The popular amazement that devout and learned men who 
judgment. were fully qualified to instruct and pray 
for their neighbors should hesitate to do so without 
taking the pains to cross the sea for the purpose of 
securing " the permission of a cross old gentleman at 
Canterbury." 1 

But whatever might be the theories held as to the 
succedaneums proposed, the fact was patent that the 
question of the Episcopate was involved in the deeper 
question of the legal position of the colonies, and that 
that question could only be decided by the stern arbi- 
trament of the sword. 

i MeMaster: History of the United States, vol. i. p. 232. 



190 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

A SURVEY. 

It is not easy to reproduce a picture of a past time, 
but it will be of interest to pause here to take a broad 
view of the condition of the Colonial Church at the 
period immediately preceding the War of Independence. 

It had then extended from the chief towns and settle- 
ments on the seaboard, where it had first gained a lodge- 
Spread of the m ent, to the new places of the second rank. 
Church. ^ £] ie opening f the century it had been 

found only at such places as Boston, Newport, New 
York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and on the Virginia 
coast. Now there were parishes at Falmouth and Casco, 
besides the old one at Portsmouth ; at Salem, Dedham, 
Marblehead, in Massachusetts ; at Bristol, R. I., and 
New-England towns of a similar class. When New 
Hampshire, with its territorial appendage Vermont, had 
a Churchman for its governor at the middle of the cent- 
uiy, it was determined to endow the Church from its 
public lands. A half-section in each township in Ver- 
mont was set apart for this purpose, but the people from 
whom the surveyors were taken being hostile, the sec- 
tions were located in swamps, on mountain tops, and in 
the bottoms of lakes, so that but little else came of it 
than came of all similar attempts ; that is, the ill-will 



A SURVEY. 



191 



In Connocti- 
cat. 



of the people and small gain to the Church. 1 In Con- 
necticut alone can it be said that striking success had 
been achieved. The drift toward the Church 
of England, which began with the President 
of Yale College and his colleagues, had steadily spread. 
The people came in in large numbers. 2 There was to be 
found there a native-born clergy, of a far higher char- 
acter and education, and with more intelligent and pro- 
nounced views concerning the Church, than was the 
rule elsewhere. Even after the war, during which the 
Church had been torn to pieces and hundreds had 
moved away, there were still to be found twenty clergy 
and forty thousand Church people in that colony. 3 In 
it there had never been any of those impotent attempts 
at legal coercion which the Church essayed elsewhere. 
There was no bad blood, no memories of legal violence. 
There was a fair parish at the Dutch town of Albany, 
little churches at Rye, Jamaica, Hempstead, and on 
Staten Island, 4 beside the strong and grow- 
ing Church in New York. In that province 
the Episcopalians were reckoned at about one-fifteenth 
of the population. 5 Burlington, N. J., was one of the 
centres of Church life, and the seat of one of 

New Jarsey 

andPennsyi- the proposed bishoprics. In Pennsylvania 

missions had pushed as far west as Lancaster, 

and even Carlisle, with the nucleus of a parish on the 

Juniata. In the South there had been a distinct retro- 

1 Caswall : American Church and American Union, p. 73. 

2 Beardsley: History of the Church in Connecticut, vol. i. passim. 

3 Beardsley : Life of Seabury, p. 137. 

4 Smith: History of New York. 

4 Briggs: American Presbyterianism, p. 109. 

5 Smith: History of New York, p. 218. 



In Now York. 



192 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

gression. 1 Even in faithful old Virginia dissenters were 
two to one. 2 The results of the fatal breach between 
Condition in c ^ ev gy an( ^ people had already appeared there, 
the South. Religious indifference prevailed everywhere; 
churches were falling into neglect and ruin ; many of 
the clergy had withdrawn ; still more could have done 
so to advantage; the few faithful men who remained 
lamented and despaired. 3 Further south the condi- 
tion was scarcely better. There were two churches in 
Charleston, — an increase of one in eighty years, — and 
six meeting-houses. 4 But the clergy of South Carolina 
were, as a rule, zealous men, and had the great advan- 
tage of being able generally to take the side of their 
people against England. 5 

All the parishes from Maine to Georgia belonged to 
the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. Except in 
Virginia and Maryland the clergy were practically all 
missionaries of the " British Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." 

The conversion of the native Indians, which had been 
so prominent in the early plans of the Church, had 
Dscayofind- almost entirely failed and been abandoned. 
ian Missions. j n ^ ne South, where the promise fortius work 
, had once been best, it had gradually died away a 3 negro 

slavery became more and more firmly established. The 
\ low estimate of the intrinsic value of a human being, 

which slavery unconsciously creates, had operated to 

1 Perry: History, vol. ii. pp. 141-143. 

2 Lodge : History of the Colonies, p. 57. 

3 lb. p. 58. 

4 lb. p. 170. 
6 lb. p. 170. 



A SURVEY. 193 

put an end to missionary work among savages. In the 
North a struggling mission was still maintained among 
the Mohawks, 1 but it, too, was soon to be swept away 
by the imminent war. Speaking broadly, there cannot 
be said to have been any permanent work of any church 
effected among the Indians until they had become so 
surrounded and hemmed in by the white population that 
their restless savagery was to a degree restrained. The 
success was earliest and most marked among those tribes 
which were already partly civilized and fixed in their 
habitat when the whites first saw them. 2 At the period 
before us they had only just laid down the tomahawk 
and butcher-knife, which they had carried for so long at 
the instigation of the French, and were about to take 
them up again in the pay of the English. By the 
colonists they were feared and loathed as monsters 
compounded of wolf and fiend. 

The Church growth was very unequal in different 
localities. The accession from Quakers in Pennsyl- 
Sources of vania, which had set in at a very early period, 
s ain - still continued. The reports of the mission- 

aries in the outlying counties constantly record the 
baptism of these people and their children. The rapid 
growth in Connecticut has been already noticed. In 
New York and New Jersey the great gain was from the 
Dutch. The hereditary enmities which separated other 
Presbyterians from the Church did not operate among 
them. There had been differenaes, of course, but there 
was no deep-seated rancor on either hand. They deeply 

1 Perry: History, vol. i. p. 333. 

2 Parkman: Discovery of the Great West, p. 275. 

2 Liggins: Value and Succors of Foieign Missions, p. 157. 



194 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

sympathized with the Church in one important particu- 
lar ; they also felt bound to cross the sea for ordination. 1 
When a schism was effected among themselves upon 
this question, and an " American Dutch Church" was 
From the set ll P> 2 man y of the dissatisfied on either 
Dutch. h.and came to the English Church. But the 

most active cause was the stolid tenacity with which 
they held on to the Dutch tongue in their public wor- 
ship, long after their children and youth had ceased to 
be at home in it. These became restive and came 
numerously to the Church, where they could hear Eng- 
lish spoken. When the elders did bring themselves to 
give up their Dutch, it was too late ; their children had 
become Episcopalians. 3 

In Philadelphia the Dutch congregation offered to 
come over in a body if the Bishop of London would 
ordain their minister. 

The Lutheran Caetus in Pennsylvania made the same 
proposition, and the Swedish Commissary offered to 
lead the movement, and to conduct the negotiations 
between the two Churches, in both of which his own 
ministry was recognized. 4 Had there been a bishop 
resident there is every reason to believe that a perma- 
nent coalescence might have been effected between both 

1 Gunn: Memoirs of Dr. Livingston, New York, 1829, pp. 92, 93. 

2 lb. p. 94. 

3 A Mr. Livingston, a member of the Dutch Church, writes in 1770: 
" Had this been done thirty years ago the Dutch Congregation would have 
been much more numerous than it is now. The greatest part of the 
Episcopal Church consists of the accessions they have had from the 
Dutch Church." And he adds that though Dutch was his own mother 
tongue, he could not understand a sermon half so well in it as he could 
in English; and as for his children, " there was not one that understood 
a sentence in Dutch." Memoirs of Dr. Livingston, p. 108. 

4 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Pa., pp. 3G7, 39(5,432. 



A SURVEY. 195 

these bodies and this Church, as could also have been 
done with the Methodists ten years later. 

The constant complaint of the time was that there 
were not enough clergy to go in and possess the places 
Lack of which offered. Young men thought twice 

clergy. before they ventured upon the dangers of 

shipwreck and smallpox, as well as the great expense, 
which were involved in a journey to England for ordi- 
nation. 1 

With the meagre means at her hand the Church 
had done much in the way of education, but at the 
date before us was being left behind in this race by 
the other churches. The institutions now known as 
Columbia College and the University of Pennsylvania 
had both been established under Church auspices, and 
in both instances had for their primary object to increase 
the ministry. 2 They had clergymen for their organizers 
and first presidents, but as the political issue grew more 
clearly pronounced they passed more and more out from 
under Episcopal influence. 

The Church life was affected, as it always is, by the 
prevailing moral habits of the age. Public and private 
state of re- m o ra ^s never reached so low an ebb in the 
ligion. colonies as they did in the mother country ; 

but still they were low enough'. The Deism and its 
attendant loosening of moral sanctions, which domi- 
nated the popular life of England, affected America 
also. Tom Paine, the most effective writer on the 
Colonial side of the political issue, gained in that way 

i Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Pa., p. 434 passim . 
2 Perry: History, vol. i. cli. xxxiii. 



106 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

the popularity which made his cheap and taking infi- 
delity spread among the people. It never ran into that 
a superfluity of naughtiness which forms so strange a 

chapter in the history of modern England, but rather 
produced a low standard of righteousness, and a sordid 
manner of life. 

The typical man of his time Avas Benjamin Franklin. 
He had been longer known and exercised more influ- 
ence in every department of life than any 
Influence of . 

Benjamin other man in America. Upon the moral and 

religious side this influence was wholly bad. 
His autobiography showed that the gross offences of 
his own early life were repented of, not because 
they had been sinful, but because they had been fool- 
ish. They were to be avoided by other young men, 
not because they were hateful to God and left stains 
upon the soul, but because they hindered earthly suc- 
cess. The mean and cautious maxims of Poor Richard 
" passed into the daily speech of the people, were 
quoted in sermons, were printed on the title-pages of 
pamphlets, and used as matter by the newspaper moral- 
ists of the day, and continued to be read with avidity 
even down to the Revolution." 1 They contain no high 
or noble motive. They are all the maxims 'of a selfish 
man, and all such as might be kept with ease by an 
impure man. They tended to dry up the springs of 
religion. As the thoughts of a man who was rather 
j ion-religious than irreligious, they fairly reflect the 
spirit of a non-religious age. Franklin was the repre- 
sentative man of his generation. Unquestionably great 

1 McMaster: Life of Benjamin Franklin, p. 113. 



A SURVEY 



197 



in science, in statesmanship, in diplomacy and affairs, 
he was utterly incapable of understanding things which 
the world has always deemed of prime importance. 
Nominally a Churchman, he poked fun at those who 
sought the Episcopate. A man of letters, he produced 
a paraphrase of the Book of Job which he considered to 
be better English than King James's translation, 1 and 
made a Prayer-Book 2 which could only be of use to 
such as had no sense of devotion. But his age was 
like him, and he had largely made it so, in it3 lack of 
spiritual earnestness. 

It is difficult now to conceive how coarse and cruel 
life in America was a century ago. " Redemptioners " 



1 KING JAMES'S. 

Verse 6. Now there was a day 
when the sons of God came to present 
themselves hefore the Lord, and Satan 
came also amongst them. 



7. And the Lord said unto Satan, 
Whence comest thou? Then Satan 
answered the Lord and said, From go- 
ing to and fro in the earth and from 
walking up and down in it. 

8. And the Lord said unto Satan, 
Hast thou considered my servant Job, 
that there is none like him in the 
earth, a perfect and upright man, one 
that feareth God and escheweth evil? 



9. And Satan answered the Lord 
and said, Doth Job fear God for 
naught ? 



2 Beardsley: Life of 



FRANKLIN. 

Verse C>. And it being levee 
day in Heaven, all God's no- 
bility came to court to present 
themselves before him ; and 
Satan also appeared in the 
circle, as one of the ministry. 

7. And God said unto Satan 
You have been some time ab- 
sent; where were you? And 
Satan answered, I have been at 
my country seat, and in differ- 
ent places visiting my friends. 

8. And God said, Well, what 
think you of Lord Job ? You 
see he is my best friend, a per- 
fectly honest man, full of re- 
spect for me, and avoiding 
everything that might offend 
me. 

9. And Satan answered, 
Does your majesty imagine that 
his good conduct is the effect of 
personal attachment and affec- 
tion ? — McMaster: Benjamin 
Franklin, p. 87. 

Seabury, p. 243. 



198 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

and apprentices went half clad, slept in garrets, ate 
cold meat in the kitchen, and were acquainted with 
Coarseness ^he cudgel. The man who was unfortunate 
of the age. enough to owe a few dollars was sent to a gaol 
so vile that it cannot here be even described. Prison- 
ers for debt and for crime were herded together as re- 
gardless of sex as if they had been so many beasts. 
Even in Connecticut, convicts were confined in an 
underground cave, reeking with filth, chained by the 
neck to iron bars. In Massachusetts ten crimes, and 
in Delaware twenty, were punishable by death. The 
whole machinery of reform and the administration of 
charity with which the Church is identified now, was 
wanting. Soldiers and sailors were flogged half to 
death for petty offences. The stocks, the pillory, and 
the whipping-post stood in the public square, and their 
victims were pelted by the rabble. A public hanging 
would draw a crowd from miles around. Women who 
had been convicted of larceny were carted down Broad- 
way to the whipping-post, and received thirty-nine laslies 
each. 1 The year the Revolutionary War began, two 
men were burned at the stake at Poughkeepsie, for 
arson. 2 Within thirty years of the same date, men had 
been burned, hung alive in chains, and broken on the 
wheel, in New York. 3 Education was general among 
the better classes in the North, but in the South it was 
neither possessed nor desired. There, but few gentle- 
men were able to write an intelligent letter, 4 and the 
common people could neither read nor write at all. 

1 Lodge: History of English Colonies, p. 324. 

2 lb. p. 324. 

3 lb. p. 322. 

4 lb. p. 75. 



A SURVEY. 199 

Social distinctions were sharply drawn. Rights of 
precedence were as strenuously insisted upon as at the 
Social dis- French Court. The " quality " were clearly 
tinctions marked off from the common folk. In the 

sharply- 
drawn. New England meeting-houses it was still the 

custom to " dignify the congregation." Grave and dis- 
creet persons assigned pews to the families according to 
their standing and position. While this was not done 
formally in the parishes of the Church of England, it 
still was substantially. In point of fact, the Church was 
confined to the aristocracy either of education or of posi- 
tion. In New England it was the former, in the other 
colonies the latter. 1 It contained the frequenters of 
the provincial governor's mimic court, the county fami- 
lies in Virginia and Maryland, the collectors of the 
ports, the great merchants, the judges and lawyers, the 
refined, cultivated, and fashionable. 

The church buildings — where they possessed any 
architectural style at all — were of the petty elaborate- 
Architect- ness °^ Sir Christopher Wren. Himself the 
ure - son of a clergyman and the grandson of a 

bishop, he had set his mark upon church architecture, 
which it retained in America long after it had been out- 
grown in England. In a collected group of his English 
parish churches, one can see whence came the New- 
England meeting-house and the colonial church. 2 

The services were what would now be deemed intol- 
erably bare, cold, and lifeless. The surplice was rarely 
used. There were probably not above a score in America. 

1 Perry: History, vol. i. p. 446. 
Geo. C. Mason, architect: in Lippincott's Magazine, Nov. 1885. 



;\ 



200 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 



The " gown and bands " was the usual vestment, The 
" clerk," from his stall below the reading-desk, made 
Church the responses, and announced the hymns, 1 

services. with the formula " Let us sing to the praise 

and glory of God." The congregation sat while sing- 

* ing ; 2 when the custom of standing was introduced in 

1814, it was considered a portentous ritual innovation, 
requiring action by the House of Bishops. 3 At the 
Prayers it was not the custom for any but communi- 
cants to kneel, 4 the others sitting in a respectful atti- 
tude. The Holy Communion was celebrated quarterly, 
or, in a very few places, monthly ; and the proportion of 
communicants to the congregation was very small. 

Confirmation, of course, could not be had, and the 
Confirma- nature and purpose of the rite had well-nigh 
tion - been forgotten. Bishop White was never con- 

firmed at all, 5 and it is doubtful if Bishop Seabury was. 6 

1 Ayres: Life of Dr. Muhlenberg, pp. 40, 47. 

2 White: Memoirs, p. 39. 

3 Perry: Half-Century of Legislation, p. 434. 

4 Ayres: Life of Dr. Muhlenberg, p. 25. 

5 Dr. Muhlenberg says: " We recollect distinctly Bishop White telling 
us that he had never been confirmed, and his adding, moreover, that the 
English bishops were not in the practice of confirming those who came 
over from this country for ordination." Ayres: Life of Dr. Muhlenberg, 
p. 50. 

6 Dr. Beardsley, whose opinion must always carry weight, insists 
strenuously that Bishop Seabury must have been confirmed, because of 
the stress he always laid upon the rite after he became a bishop himself. 
This a priori argument, however, hardly overcomes the facts: first, that 
there is no record of or allusion to his confirmation; and second, that the 
bishop who ordained him was the most unlikely of all to insist upon a 
neglected ordinance. 

" Thomas of Lincoln is spoken of as a worthy man, but too fond of the 
company of people of rank, and sadly forgetful of his promises. He 
squinted terribly, and was very deaf; but his never-failing humor and 
facetiousness made him an amusing companion. George II. delighted in 
his society, and brought him over, with promises of promotion, from his 
chaplaincy in Hamburg." Abbey: English Church and its Bishops, vol. 
ii. p. 75. 



A SURVEY. 201 

A favorite mode of raising the money to build 
churches was by lotteries, which were conducted under 
State control. 1 The clergy were never spoken of as 
" priests," but always as clergymen or ministers, and, 
if the order was meant to be designated, as Presbyters 
or Deacons. Their stipends were, for the most part, 
painfully meagre. Probably there were not more than 
five which reached one hundred and fifty pounds a year. 
The minister at Lancaster, Pa., complains that he 
cannot possibly support himself and family of eleven 
persons on less than one hundred pounds annually. 2 
To take away from such ill-paid clergy, in part, at least, 
their cruel anxiety for the future of their families, a 
society had been formed in 1769, called, in the long- 
winded fashion of the time, " The Corporation for the 
Relief of Widows and Children of Clergymen in the 
Communion of the Church of England in America." 3 
At the outbreak of the war the society already pos- 
sessed a fund of nearly fifteen thousand pounds. When 
the war had ended, this society became the meeting- 
place of the scattered parishes, and the rallying-point 
for the disorganized Church. 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Pa. pp. 374, 376. 

2 lb. p. 371. 

3 Perry: History, vol. i. p. 647, where an excellent sketch of this noble 
charity is given by the late John William Wallace, LL.D. 



202 THE ENGLISH CHUECH IN THE COLONIES. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 

In 1765 the treaty which shut the French out of 
North America was signed by England and France. 
" Well," said the French minister as he signed it, " so 
we are gone ; England will go next." His prophecy 
was quite correct. It had been fear of the French and 
their savage allies on the western frontier that kept the 
colonies from bringing their differences with England 
to a settlement long ago. Now that danger was gone. 
Before that they had two foes to consider, now they had 
but one. The questions at issue were fundamental. 
The inevita- ^ ne war °^ the Revolution, like that of the 
bie conflict. Great Rebellion, was one of the inevitables. 
The social, the political, and, above all, the commercial 
interests of the two countries, were radically opposed. 
Absolute submission, peaceable separation, or fight, were 
the only alternatives. Men shut their eyes to the situ- 
ation, and sought diligently for some fourth course, but 
there was none. In ten years from the French peace 
the issue was made up. Virginia and Massachusetts, 
the two oldest colonies, where the seeds of strife had 
had longest time to grow and ripen, led the American 
side. 

Though the issue seems simple now, in the light 
of its result, it did not seem so then. The popu- 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 203 

lace divided itself roughly into three classes. First, 
the great mass of the people, who were inert, apathetic, 
dreaded the possible calamity of war, and hoped that 
somebody would hit upon a way of adjusting the diffi- 
culties peaceably. Second, the small party of ultra 
" Tories," who could not conceive of opposition to the 
powers that be, and looked for relief from the clemency 
of the king. Third, the small party of patriots who 
looked forward to, and through, the coming struggle, 
and burned to have the question settled, by peaceable 
measures if possible, by war if need be. 

But in such cases events move rapidly, and precipi- 
tate popular judgment. As men's passions grew more 
Equal division an( l more engaged, these two parties made 
of parties. forays upon the passive mass, and bore away 
recruits into either camp. When the two ultimate parties 
were finally made up they were nearly equally balanced, 
and remained so until the fortunes of war weakened the 
Tory side. Even in Massachusetts a majority were at 
first opposed to the war. The bill which gave it sanc- 
tion was twice defeated by the Legislature before it was 
finally passed. In Connecticut the opposition was still 
more numerous. 1 In New York the parties were so 
equally divided that when the Provincial Congress 
chanced to receive notices upon the same day, in 1775, 
that General Washington was about to cross the Hud- 
son on his way to the headquarters at Cambridge, and 
that General Try on had arrived in the harbor and was 
about to disembark, they ordered the colonel command- 
ing the militia so to dispose of his forces that he could 



Sabine : Loyalists in the American Revolution, vol. i. p. 27. 



204 THE ENGLISH CHUECH IN THE COLONIES. 

receive " either the General or Governor Tryon, which- 
ever should first arrive, and wait npon them both as 
well as circumstances would allow." 1 In the far South 
the situation was the same. The South Carolina patriots 
and Tories were equally matched in numbers, and drifted 
into a savage enmity against each other, which was 
marked throughout the war by atrocities in which each 
side outdid the other. 2 In the early years of the war, as 
many as forty thousand Tories enlisted in the king's 
forces. 3 But a far larger number, unable to stem the 
Exodus of popular current, and finding their lives in the 
Tories. colonies intolerable, left the country. They 

went back to England, emigrated to Canada, to Nova 
Scotia, to the Barbadoes, and to the Spanish settlements. 
Eleven hundred left Boston in a single day. 4 They in- 
cluded all classes of people, — members of the council, 
merchants, clergymen, farmers, mechanics, traders. The 
mother and sister of Gouverneur Morris took the Tory 
side, and left the country. Ten thousand left New 
York alone at the time of its evacuation. Those who 
remained were roughly handled. They became the 
target of all popular abuse, were lampooned, defrauded 
of their debts, mobbed, shot at from thickets, tarred and 
feathered, smothered in smoke-houses like flitches of 
bacon, had their cattle killed and their houses burned, — 
and, Avhere they had the opportunity, retaliated in kind. 
The significant thing to us is that, as a rule, they were 
Episcopalians. The Presbyterians and Baptists in the 

1 Sparks : Life of Washington. 

2 Sabine: Loyalists, vol. i. p. 42. 
2 Roosevelt: Winning of the West, vol. ii. ch. ix. 
8 Sabine: Loyalists, vol. i. p. 71. 
4 lb., vol. i. p. 25. 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 205 

Southern, and, with but few exceptions, 1 the Puritans 
in the Eastern colonies, threw themselves with enthusi- 
asm into the quarrel, on the American side. 2 The posi- 
tion of the Churchmen was perplexing, They 

Lay Church- r r ■ ■ & j 

men's posi- were more closely bound to England than 
were their dissenting fellow-citizens. A large 
proportion of the laity, and almost the whole of the 
clergy, remained steadfast in their allegiance to the 
Crown until the end. But the situations of the laity and 
the clergy were not the same. The layman was attached 
to the English Church only on its spiritual, and not its 
secular side. The clergyman was bound by a double 
bond. Laymen whose political beliefs led them that 
way could at the same time say their prayers from the 
Prayer-Book and fight against the king. They violated 
no sanction of conscience or previous obligation in so 
doing. From this class came an extraordinary propor- 
tion of the leaders of the Revolution. Washington and 
Patrick Henry were devout communicants. Franklin 
was 2 Churchman, so far as he had any religion at all. 
The Morrises, Livingston, Sterling, Jay, Richard Henry 
Lee, Madison, Morgan, the Pendletons, and the Pinck- 
neys, are but examples of the men whom the Church 
contributed to the American side. 

But the position of the clergy was vastly different. 
Situation of I 11 the ^ rs ^ place, a large proportion were 
the clergy. English by birth and education. Nearly all, 
except in Virginia and Maryland, were missionaries of 
the " Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in For- 

1 Like Dr. Byles, for example. 

2 Baird : Religion in America, p. 215. 






206 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

eign Parts." Their livelihood was at stake. At any 
sign of " disloyalty" their stipends would be cut off, 1 and 
starvation would confront them. But, above all, each 
one, at his ordination, had definitely sworn perpetual 
allegiance to the king. This oath was the insuperable 
difficulty. It was recorded with the Bishop of London, 
and also in their own consciences. A very small class, 
insignificant in number but great in character and influ- 
ence, believed themselves to have been absolved by the 
authority of circumstances. They reasoned with them- 
selves that the ordination oath of allegiance to the king 
was bnt the historic declaration that priests must be 
obedient and docile citizens ; that it did not mean liter- 
ally to King George, but to the "powers that be," for 
which the king there stood; that when those powers 
were transferred, by forces with which they had nothing 
to do, to another rule under which they found themselves 
living, their allegiance was due to the new authority. 
They argued that the situation here was the same that 
had been in England at the Revolution of 1688. The 
great mass of the bishops and clergy had then trans- 
ferred their allegiance from the de jure to the de facto 
king. Why should they not make a similar transfer of 
obedience to the Republic ? 

Being thus convinced, sturdy Dr. Muhlenberg accepted 
Patriot ms ca P tain's commission, donned his new 

clergy. uniform, put on his gown over it, preached 

an earnest sermon to his thronged congregation upon the 
duty of the hour; then laid his gown over the reading- 



1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Mass. pp. 602, 609. 
1 White: Memoirs, p. 13. 






THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 207 

desk, marched out of church, stood at the door with a 
recruiting sergeant's roll in hand, and enlisted a whole 
battalion of Continental troops on the spot. 1 Dr. White 
of Philadelphia became Chaplain of the Continental 
Congress, and never deviated from the patriotic choice 
he had made. Dr. Provoost of New York was so un- 
compromising a patriot that he could not bring himself, 
in after days, to forgive the Tory Bishop Seabury. But 
this sentiment was confined almost entirely to the clergy 
of the middle colonies. It found its formal expression 
in a letter to the Bishop of London in 1775, in which 
the clergy declare that " the people will feel and judge 
for themselves in matters affecting their own civil hap- 
piness ; and were we capable of any attempt which might 
have the appearance of drawing them to what they think 
would be a slavish resignation of their rights, it would 
be destructive of ourselves, as well as the Church of 
which we are ministers. It is but justice to our supe- 
riors, and your Lordship in particular, to declare that 
our consciences would not permit us to injure the 
rights of this country, in which we are to leave our 
families." 2 

But the majority of the clergy could not look at the 
case after this fashion. They could not lift the obliga- 
Lo list tion of the ordination oath off their consciences 
clergy. even if they had wished, — and they did not 

wish. They were quite ready to join in any respectful 
address to Great Britain for a redress of the colonial 

1 Ayres: Life of Dr. Muhlenberg, p. 4. 

2 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Pa. p. 472. 

2 The signers were Richard Peters, William Smith, Jacob Duche, 
Thomas Coombe, William Stringer, and William White. 



208 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

grievances, but in their hearts they did not regard these 
grievances as being so very intolerable, after all. They 
looked at the situation with English eyes. They fondly 
hoped for, and urged, some amicable settlement of the 
contest. If no such settlement could be reached, then 
the same authority which taught them to fear God also 
bade them to "honor the king." Seabury and Inglis 
could not quiet their consciences by what they thought 
the shallow casuistry of White and Provoost. Above 
all things, they prayed to be delivered from being com- 
pelled to choose sides in the issue now joined. But this 
could not be. Congress appointed July 20, 1775, for a 
day of fasting and prayer, and called upon all Christians 
to assemble at their accustomed places of worship. The 
Church clergy were forced into a corner. To disregard 
the proclamation entirely would openly fix them in the 
opposition. To publicly pray for the success of the king 
and royal arms would be too much to venture. Pray 
against them they could not. But they must call the 
congregation together and have a service of some sort. 
Some said they were entirely ready to do so, for surely 
never were times when fasting and prayer were more 
needsd. All but four of the clergy in the country, of 
whom Dr. Seabury was one, opened their churches. 1 
But their real sentiments came out in their sermons. 
The burden of them was compromise. If that could not 
be done, then, it was intimated rather than said, submis- 
sion would be the duty. 

The popular indignation was profound. Laymen 
declared that the clergy did not voice the real feeling 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Pa. p. 479. 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 209 

of Churchmen. Newspapers reviled them as Tories, 
traitors, and British emissaries. u No more passive 
obedience," was chalked upon the church-doors. 1 One 
minister writes to England: "It is urged as a just 
cause of complaint against one of the militia captains, 
that he had lugged his compan}^ to church on a fast day, 
to hear that old wretch (meaning" me /) preach, who was 
always an enemy to the present measures." 2 The 
Episcopal clergy stood condemned in the eyes of the 
party who were to carry through the War for Inde- 
Sufferings of pendence and build the Republic. The sen- 
the clergy. tence was harshly carried into execution. 
The Connecticut clergy assembled at New Haven and 
determined to suspend all public services, and wait for 
better times. 3 Those of New York retired to the 
seclusion of private life, exiled themselves to Nova 
Scotia, or moved within the British lines. Dr. Seabury 
became chaplain to a regiment of British infantry. 
The Church in Virginia was formally disestablished by 
the colonial government. 4 But neither seclusion, insig- 
nificance, nor high character was able to save the clergy 
from the fury of the populace. Their churches were 
wrecked, defiled, and burned. Their property was con- 
fiscated. Their cattle were killed. They were hooted, 
pelted, arrested, imprisoned, ducked in the pond, shot 
at, starved, and banished. The baneful old alliance of 
the Church with the State here produced its inevitable 
result. The Church, which in itself was not disliked 

1 Perry: Historical Collections, vol. Pa. p. 481. 

2 lb.: vol. Pa. p. 481. 

3 Beardsley : History of the Church in Conn., vol. i. p. 318. 

4 Baird: Religion in America, p. 220. 



210 THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE COLONIES. 

by Americans, was wrecked because its fortunes were 
bound to a State which they hated. 1 

1 The following partial list, compiled chiefly from Sabine's "Loyal- 
ists in the Revolution," will give an idea of the way the Church was 

devastated during the war : — 

Rev. Mr. Adams, York, Pa. ; soused three times in a pond and warned 
{ to leave. 

Rev. H. Addison, Md.; banished, estate confiscated, of value of thirty 
thousand pounds. 

Rev. John Agnew, Suffolk, Va. ; banished. 

Rev. John Andrews, Master Episcopal Academy, Conn. ; banished. 

Rev. East Apthorp, Cambridge, Mass.; banished. 

Rev. Dr. Auchmuty, Rector Trinity Church, New York; church, rec- 
tory, and school burned; loss twenty thousand pounds. 

Rev. Ephraim Avery, Rye ; cattle killed, banished. 

Rev. Luke Babcock, Phillipsburg, N.Y. ; cattle killed ; robbed, died. 

Rev. Jacob Bailey, Dresden, Md. ; robbed, starved, banished. 

Rev. Thomas Barton, York, Pa.; imprisoned two years, died. 

Rev. Daniel Batewell, York, Pa.; imprisoned, died. 

Rev. Abraham Beach, John Beach, Conn.; harried, shot at, cattle 
killed. 

Rev. John Beardsley, Conn.; robbed, banished. 

Rev. George Bissett, Newport, R.I. ; church w T recked, banished. 

Rev. Jonathan Beach, Annapolis, Md. ; imprisoned two years. 

Rev. John Bowie, Md. ; imprisoned two years. 

Rev. John Brunskill, Va. ; driven away. 

Rev. John Bullman, Charleston; banished. 

Rev. Mather Byles, Cambridge; banished. 
'Rev. Henry Carver, King's Chapel, Boston ; banished. 

Rev. William Clark, Dedham ; imprisoned, banished. 

Rev. Richard Clark, Charleston; banished. 

Rev. Samuel Cook, Shrewsburj^, N.J.; driven away. 

Rev. Thomas Coombe, Philadelphia; imprisoned, banished. 

Rev. Mr. Cooper, Charleston ; driven away by his parishioners. 

Rev. Jacob Duche, Philadelphia; first chaplain of Congress, turned 

I Tory, banished. 

Rev. Edward Edmonston, Baltimore; fled. 
Rev. John Eversfield, Md. ; tried, discharged as "too old to do any 

hurt." 
Rev. Samuel Fayerweather, R.I.; "silenced." 
Rev. Nathaniel Fisher, Salem, Mass. ; imprisoned, banished. 
Rev. John Graves, Providence; "silenced." 
Rev. Matthew Graves, New London, Conn. ; driven away by his own 

people. 
Rev. Charles Inglis, Rector Trinity Church, New York; warned not to 
read prayers for the king; persisted in doing so; an infantry company 
entered church during service, with beat of drum, to overawe him; 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 211 

but he read the prayers; compelled to flee; his property confiscated; 

became first Bishop of Nova Scotia. 
Rev. Thomas Johnson, Charlotte Co., Va. ; " with a great bowl of grog 

in his hands drank success to the British arms; " banished. 
Rev. Jeremiah Learning, Stratford, Conn. ; his portrait nailed to the 

sign-post, head downward; imprisoned; left to suffer from cold and 

nakedness; contracted hip disease ; lamed for life. 
Rev. William McGilchrist, Salem, Mass.; " silenced." 
Rev. Alexander McCrae, Littleton, Va. ; mobbed, whipped, threatened 

with death; but persisted and stayed. 
Rev. Mr. Micklejohn, N.C. ; banished. 
Rev. Richard Moseley, Litchfield, Conn.; banished. 
Rev. Harry Monroe, Albany ; banished lo Canada. 
Rev. Samuel Peters, Hebron, Conn. ; mobbed, stripped, banished. 
Rev. Jonathan Adell, N. J. ; arrested, escaped. 
Rev. Joseph Reed, Newbern; ejected by his people. 
Rev. Winwood Sergeant, Cambridge, Mass.; banished. 
Rev. John Scott, Everston, Mass.; arrested, banished. 
Rev. Samuel Seabury, D.D., Westchester, N.Y. ; threatened, shot at, 

imprisoned, took refuge in British lines; made maps of Long Island 

for the British army, accepted British chaplaincy. 
Rev. John Stuart, missionary to the Mohawks; arrested, chapel defiled, 

a bottle of rum emptied over the altar, banished. 
Rev. Epenetus Townsend, North Salem, N.Y.; arrested, banished, 

drowned at sea. 
Rev. John Troutbeck, King's Chapel, Boston; banished, captured by 

pirates. 
Rev. Roger Viets, Simsbury, Conn.; fined twenty pounds, imprisoned, 

banished. 
Rev. William Walters, Trinity Church, Boston; banished, property of 

seven thousand pounds confiscated. 
Rev. John Weeks, Marblehead, Mass. ; banished, died of poverty and 

exposure. 
Rev. Isaac Wilkins, D.D., Westchester, N.Y.; banished, his writings 

dressed in tar and buzzard's feathers, and burned. 
Rev. John Wingate, Orange Co., Va. ; books burned. 
Rev. Edward Winslow, Quincy, Mass.; banished. 
Rev. John Wiswall, Falmouth, Va. ; banished. 



PART II. 

THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN 
THE UNITED STATES. 



PART II. 

THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN 
THE UNITED STATES. 



CHAPTER I. 

GATHERING UP THE FRAGMENTS. 

When the verdict of the trial by war was reached 
and the independence of the Colonies recognized by 
The desoia- treaty, the English Church in America ceased 
tlon - to exist. As a Church which was content 

to regard itself as a department of the English state, it 
could have no being where that state was not. Its 
fragments lay scattered from Portsmouth to Savannah. 
The ligature which had fastened these parishes together 
and tied them to the see of London was now cut, and 
they fell asunder like so many beads when the string is 
broken. They had all been wasted by war, and many 
had perished during the last ten years from sheer neg- 
lect. Their members, being generally loyalists, had 
been proscribed during the conflict, and were now 
under a political and social ban. They had hoped 
that England would guarantee their rights in the stipu- 
lations of the treaty. They found to their horror that 
she had abandoned them in the most cold-blooded man- 



216 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

ner. 1 They had been robbed, outraged, their property 
confiscated, and their persons roughly handled, and 
now they not only found that they had no redress, but 
that they were again confronted with a new peril. 
During the war the colonists' hands had been full with 
the foreign enemy. Now that he had withdrawn, they 
Trsatment of proposed to make a finish of the wretches who 
Tones, ] iac [ gi ven hi m aid and comfort. General 

Greene, Hamilton, Jay, Patrick Henry, Gadsden, and 
Marion championed their cause in vain. 2 In spite of 
their arguments that it would be unjust and impolitic 
now to proscribe men for opinions which twenty years 
ago had been held by everybody, 3 the passions of the 
populace ran so high that they set about deliberately to 
extirpate the hated Tories. They were denounced as 
monsters who had put themselves beyond the pale of 
mercy or even justice. Then set in a period of per- 
sonal violence, social persecution, and legal repression, 
which is not a pleasant page in American history. 4 
The leading patriots, men who had given their best 
counsel and their best blood for the American cause, 
tried in vain to stem the tide. They were themselves 
swept under by it, and some of them well-nigh ruined. 
Some of the Tories indeed had no right to hope for any- 
thing. The score against them for their deeds in the 
troubled times was so long and ugly that all who bore 
the same party name with them were taxed to pay it. 
Many abandoned everything and fled from the storm. 

1 McMaster: History of the United States, vol. i. p. 109. 

2 Sabine: Loyalists, vol. i. p. 89. 

3 General Greene. 

4 McMaster: vol. i. pp. 109-130. 



GATHERING UP THE FRAGMENTS. 217 

They embarked in the British men-of-war and were car- 
ried back to England. Numbers moved to Florida and 
the Spanish possessions. 1 Still more went to Nova 
Scotia and the Bermudas. In this final emigration the 
weakened Church was still further depleted. It was 
left without reputation, without money, without men. 

The hostility to it as a Church, however, 
Popular _ . 

opinion of the rapidly subsided. The fear and hatred with 

which it had been so long regarded as a pos- 
sible source of political danger, disappeared almost at 
once upon the achievement of independence. 2 As a 
religious sect, it was conceived to be practically defunct. 
It was regarded as a " piece of heavy baggage which 
the British had left behind them when they evacuated 
New York and Boston." 3 

Now, what shall be done with the thrice broken frag*- 
ments of the Colonial Church of England ? What 
hands shall gather them up and put them together? 
Upon what principles shall the new Church to be 
formed from them be organized? 

The first sign of movement among the broken mem- 
bers of the body showed itself in Maryland. There had 
always been a marked difference in temper, habits, and 
mode of life, among the Eastern, Middle, and Southern 
colonies. This difference was even more plainly marked 
Three mo- in ecclesiastical things. It became most sig- 
ingreorgan-" n ifi can t in the reconstruction period now be- 
ization. f ore us< j n eac j 1 sec tion a different motive 

and purpose dominated the men who set about to rebuild 
the Church. 

1 McMaster: History of the United States, vol. i. p. 111. 

2 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, pp. 91, 93. 

3 An expression of Bishop Williams, of Connecticut. 



218 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

In Virginia and Maryland the uppermost thought 
was to save the endowments of which the Church of 
England had stood possessed before the war. To res 
cue and hold these, an organization must be created 
which could have a standing before the law in the new 
government. 

In New England the dominant purpose was to save 
the Church's ideal ; to guarantee its apostolic order ; 
to establish in its completeness that primitive doctrine 
and discipline for the sake of which many of its clergy 
had come out of Presbyterianism at great cost. 

In the Middle colonies the leaders set clearly before 
themselves the task to organize a National Church, an 
Episcopal foundation which would be to all its members 
what the federal government then in process of con- 
struction would be to its citizens. Of the three ideas 
Dr. Smith of Maryland, Dr. Seabury of Connecticut, 
and Dr. White of Pennsylvania, became the several 
champions. The first failed, partly through the faults 
of its leader, and still more because the thing aimed at 
was impracticable : the other two succeeded, and the 
combination of their plans produced the Church sub- 
stantially as it has continued to be. 

The question which first pressed in Virginia and 
Maryland was a practical one. Who now should ad- 
The South- minister upon the Colonial Church's estate ? 
em attempt, ^he property was a valuable one. It con- 
sisted not only of churches, glebes, parsonages, and 
landed endowments, but also of the right to the pro- 
ceeds of taxation for religious objects. Who was its 
owner? It was contended on the one hand that the 



GATHERING UP THE FRAGMENTS. 219 

property had been created by the state ; that the state, 
while the state was England, had only held the prop- 
erty in trust for the public religious weal ; that a new 
state was now substituted for the old one-; that the new 
one was seized of all the power and right in the prem- 
ises which the old one had possessed. But it was 
agreed on all hands that in the hew state there should 
be no religious establishment. What, then, should it do 
with the Church property which it found on its hands ? 
Should it resume it and secularize it ? — retain it as a 
trust for the benefit of all religious denominations ? — 
turn it over in fee simple to the representatives of the 
Colonial Episcopal Church? If the latter, who was its 
representative ? The Bishop of London ? — that was 
absurd on the face of it. The various parishes? — they 
were not independent legal corporations, but only sub- 
divisions of an empire which was now extinct. In any 
case the question of how to dispose of the proceeds of 
taxation would still remain. 

The Churchmen's feeling was that the property was 
theirs absolutely ; they would not agree that the state 
had simply held it in trust for them ; they insisted that 
it had been a gift outright. But the practical difficulty 
could not be evaded. There was no organized Church 
on the ground which could take it over, even if it were 
offered. Maryland had indeed, after the Declaration of 
Independence, " secured to the Church of England all 
the glebes, churches, chapels, and other property owned 
by her," 1 but the question now was, who represents the 
Church of England? 2 

1 Hawks: Ecclesiastical Contributions, vol. Md. p. 288. 

2 Hawks: Ecclesiastical Contributions, vol. Va. p. 224 et seq. 



I 



220 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

One of the most sagacious men of his age, the Rev. 
Dr. William Smith, previously rector of the Philadel- 
phia College, and now President of Washington College, 
lived in Maryland. He foresaw, while the war was 
raging, that this question would have to be met, and 
that upon its right answer would depend the Church's 
temporal fortunes in that State. In 1780 he called a 
conference of clergy and laymen to consider the matter. 
His purpose was to organize the disjecta membra into a 
body corporate which could have a local habitation and 
a name. He gave it the name himself. 1 He called it 
The Church ^he " Protestant Episcopal Church." This 
named. name, which still obtains, does not seem to 

have been the result of any special thought or delibera- 
tion, but was adopted unconsciously as the title which 
best expressed the fact. They could not have called it 
" the Church " in any exclusive sense, for their inten- 
tion was to approach the Legislature which had just 
declared that it was not the Church in that sense. 
They could not call it " the American Church," for 
there was no American Church. To call it " the Cath- 
olic Church " would have been in the face of a common 
usage which had already given that title to another 
body. But, in common with all the Churchman of 
their time, they assumed that they were Protestant; — 
Episcopacy was their differentiate. They combined 
the two facts and gave the Church its present name. 

The result of the conference was to recommend that 
the action already taken by the State, allowing each 

i Smith : Life of Dr. William Smith, vol. ii. p. 39. 
Cf. Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 5. 






GATHERING UP THE FRAGMENTS. 221 

denomination to receive the benefits accruing from taxa- 
tion, should be accepted ; and that, in addition, the 
Protestant Episcopal parishes should be allowed " to 
lay rates on pews," or otherwise to increase their 
revenue. 1 

This was while the war still dragged its length along, 
and the Legislature took no action upon their recom- 
mendation. When peace had come, Dr. Smith induced 
Governor Paca, his old pupil at the Philadelphia Col- 
lege, to bring the matter forward in his message. At 
the same time, in conjunction with another minister, he 
asked leave to call a formal conference. 2 This conven- 

Organization ^ 0n ' w ^i° n me ^ a ^ Annapolis, ill 1783, COll- 
in Maryland, tained eighteen clergymen. It called itself 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in that State. It de- 
clared itself to be the legal and actual successor of the 
Church of England there ; that therefore all glebes, 
lands, and property belonging to its predecessor now 
belonged to it by law ; that it would be at once its right 
and its duty to modify the liturgy and customs of the 
old Church so as to fit the changed political circum- 
stances ; that in doing so it must not be thought to 
destroy its identity ; that in order to hold its trusts and 
discharge its duties it must now proceed forthwith to 
effect a complete organization ; that the prime thing 
needed for the complete equipment of an Episcopal 
Church was a bishop. The Rev. Dr. William Smith 
was elected to fill that office, when, and as soon as, he 
could procure consecration. Dr. Smith's testimonials of 

1 Smith : Life, vol. ii. p. 93. 

2 lb. vol. ii. p. iVa. 



222 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

fitness for this office were signed by the eighteen clergy 

present, and afterward by the few others in the State 

who were detained away. 1 

Virginia, in the process of organization, followed 

much the same lines. 2 In both States the feeling and 

action were the outcome of their previous habits of 

Church life. They approached the task upon the side 

which first presented itself. That was the secular side. 

Ecclesiastical issues of great importance were bound up 

with it, but these were not at first so clearly seen as in 

both the other groups of colonies. But to them fell 

the weighty task of settling the relation of 
Relation of & J & 

Church and the Church to the civil power in the new 

Republic. Before it was finally determined, 
the Church was shorn of much of her former preroga- 
tives, and lost much property which was equitably hers. 
But here, as always, the children bore their parents' 
faults. To disentangle Church and State in the colo- 
nies where they had been united for a century and a 
half, was a task so arduous that it would have been too 
much to expect it to have been done without errors, 
and even injustices. But, upon the whole, it was 
effected with a fair amount of equity. 

1 Smith: Life of Dr. Wm. Smith, vol. ii. p. 100. 

2 Hawks: Contributions, vol. Va. p. 179, et seq, 



THE NEW ENGLAND PLAN. 223 



CHAPTER II. 

THE NEW ENGLAND PLAN. 

In New England the controlling motive was ecclesi- 
astical. The Church Idea had been far better wrought 
out there than elsewhere. Two influences 

New England 

Churchman- had been at work for fifty years, to elevate 
s ip ' the tone of Churchmanship. The " New 

England converts," led by President Cutler and re- 
cruited constantly by men of a like way of thinking, 
had all come to the Episcopal Church from strenuous 
conviction. They had studied her history. They knew 
her claims. They had forfeited much which they held 
dear when they transferred their allegiance to her. 
They had been called upon again and again to give a 
reason for their faith. No slight reason would suffice. 
Their challengers were men who knew how to weigh 
proofs and to test assumptions. They lived among a 
people who dearly loved an argument. To hold their 
own they must know clearly what they believed, and 
why they believed it. This had compelled them to 
work out the theory of the Church, and to free it from 
all subordinate considerations. Naturally they became 
pronounced Churchmen. 

In this position they were sustained by the disposi- 
tion of the Society for the Promotion of the Gospel in 



224 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Foreign Parts, by which society most of them were 
supported. The " Venerable Society's" position in this 
regard had been emphatic from its organization. The 
New England clergy were agents much to its liking. 
In the other colonies Episcopacy was. often regarded 
as just a part of the existing order of things. It 
was accepted without much thought either way. It 
was as good a mode of Church organization as an- 
other, in some points better, but, still, not a thing of 
life and death value. Its history was venerable ; its 
endowments were valuable ; its manners were good ; its 
followers were worthy men ; it was a present fact ; but 
its ground and essential reason were not much studied. 
Beside that, the shocks and disturbances of revolu- 
tion had brought people into the way of thinking all 
things capable of change. What institution could have 
been imagined more unchangeable and established by 
longer prescription than monarchy ? But monarchy 
had been abandoned as an outworn and useless piece 
of lumber. Why not Episcopacy also ? 

The Churchmen of New England were very appre- 
hensive of this latter feeling. What else, they asked, 
Their dis- would account for the action of the Bur- 
trust of the lington Convocation, which entertained the 
of other proposition of an Independent Episcopal 

j urc men. d^n^h ? What but this could explain the 
pestilent plan which Dr. White had just wrought out 
in his awful pamphlet ? 1 Their own convictions had 
not been disturbed by the Revolution. Their sympa- 
thies had not gone with it. They were Tories. They 

1 Beardsley : Seabury, p. 97. 



THE NEW ENGLAND PLAN. 225 

accepted its results as a providential dispensation which 
they could not gainsay, but they had no part or lot in 
its spirit of change. They had never had any endow- 
ments to seduce them from the pure, spiritual concep- 
tion of the Church, or- to distract them now from their 
clear purpose of securing the primitive Faith and Apos- 
tolic Order for which they had already suffered. 

Their strength was mainly in Connecticut. When 
the war was over, there were in that State forty Episco- 
pal congregations, fourteen clergy, and a Church popu- 
lation of about forty thousand. 1 Unlike the other States, 
Connecticut had not fallen foul of the Tories when vic- 
tory settled on the American side. 2 They were allowed 
to repair their broken fortunes unmolested, in whatever 
way offered, but when they learned what their fellows 
in New York and Massachusetts were suffering they 
walked in fear and trembling. 

Word was quietly passed about among the clergy to 

attend a meeting to consider the state of affairs. Ten 

of the fourteen met at Woodbury, a little 

First Con- 
necticut straggling village among the hills of Litch- 
Convention. field Coimt ^ Their mee ting was kept a pro- 
found secret. 2 They were very doubtful as to how their 
plans would be regarded by the populace. Ten years 
before, an attempt to secure the Episcopate would have 
raised a howl ; there was reason to believe that it would 
be still more strongly resented now that the Presbyte- 

1 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, p. 137. 

1 Beardsley: History of Church in Connecticut, vol. i. p. 346. 

2 lb., vol. i. p. 253. 

8 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, p. 78. 

s Beardsley: History of Church in Connecticut, vol. i. p. 346. 



226 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

rians were in position to formulate their objections in the 
shape of law. Nor were the clergy sure of their own 
The political laymen. These were not taken into council, 
obstacles. Those of them who were loyalists were i:i 
sufficient peril already. It would require all their cir- 
cumspection to come out of it unscathed. To exacerbate 
the situation by a revival of the Episcopate seemed very 
madness. But the clergy were both courageous and clear- 
minded. They saw distinctly that the life of the Church 
was at stake. I£ anything effective were to be done to 
secure it, it must be done at once. There was serious 
risk in what they proposed to do. The temper of the 
new State towards Episcopacy had not been tested, and, 
judging by the past, the worst might be looked for. 
They would therefore not involve the laymen in the 
project at all ; they would proceed at their own proper 
peril. If they succeeded in building the Church, well 
and good ; if not, they would fail like honest men and 
conscientious Churchmen. There are no records extant 
of their proceedings at this conference at Woodbury. 
No minutes were kept, no roll of the members' names 
has come down. In truth, it was hardly a convention in 
any sense. Every man present had had his mind made 
up, long before, what was to be done. There was only 
one thing to do, that was to secure a bishop. The meet- 
ing was only to determine whom they should select to 
undertake that duty. It was no question of preferment, 
nor were there many available men to choose from. 
Whoever he might be must, of course, be a man whose 
life and learning would be respectable ; but they could 
all meet that requirement. The difficulty was to find a 



THE NEW ENGLAND PLAN. 227 

man who could accept it. It would mean for him, in 
all probability, personal unpopularity among his neigh- 
bors at home, a costly and dangerous voyage over the 
sea for consecration, infinite labor to meet and overcome 
the prejudices of the authorities in the English Church, 
and, in all likelihood, permanent expatriation. 

Their choice fell finally upon two men, either of whom 
would be suitable, but neither of whom was present. 
Choosing the They were the Rev. Drs. Jeremiah Learning 
first bishop. an( j g amue i Seabury. They were both in 
New York, but belonged in Connecticut by birth and 
service. Dr. Learning was an old man. He had been 
rector of the church at Norwalk, but had been driven 
away, with loss of goods and friends. When he was in- 
formed of the action of his Connecticut brethren, he at 
once declined the office. He was too infirm to bear the 
voyage, and, at his age, he could not face the probability 
of making for himself a new home outside of the State. 
Dr. Seabury accepted. He was a Connecticut man by 
birth, and was now fifty-four years of age, in the vigor 
of his life. He was the son of one of the "New Eng- 
land converts " from Puritanism, and, like all that stock, 
Dr.Seabury's a High Churchman. He had studied medi- 
career. cme a ^ Edinburgh, been ordained in England, 

had served as a missionary in Long Island and New 
Jersey. At the beginning of the war he was rector of 
the parish at Westchester, N. Y. He had been a pro- 
nounced, and active Tory from the beginning. With 
his friends Incdis and Chandler, he had conducted a lit- 
erary bureau advocating the British side of the contest. 
He was generally believed to have written the biting 



228 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

letters of Wilkins, signed by U A Westchester Farmer." 
He had published some very " Free Thoughts on the 
Proceedings of the Congress at Philadelphia." 1 He had 
baen seized by the Continental authorities and impris- 
oned, had escaped and taken refuge in the British lines 
on Long Island. While there he had used his topo- 
graphical knowledge of the surrounding country to 
make maps for the military operations of his protectors ; 
had been mustered into the British regular service as 
chaplain of an infantry regiment ; and was now, after his 
retirement, receiving English half-pay. His personal 
character and devotion in his priestly office were well 
known to those who chose him bishop, and were, in point 
of fact, beyond all question. Both ecclesiastically and 
politically he was in every way grateful to them. He 
represented their spirit and their situation more fairly 
than any other man who could have been chosen. 

At the time they selected him they outlined the plan 
of procedure he was to follow. 2 He was to go to Eng- 
The Connect!- ^ anc ^ anc ^ W before the bishops his credentials, 
cut plan. submitting to them the facts which, in the 
judgment of the Connecticut people, made the appoint- 
ment of an American bishop an immediate and imperative 
necessity. He was to leave no stone unturned to secure 
from them his consecration. In case he should fail of 
this, he was to go to Scotland and endeavor to secure 
consecration at the hands of the Nonjuring Episcopal 
College there. If he should succeed in either place he 
was to return to Connecticut, — if he would be allowed 

1 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, p. 30. 

2 lb., p; 104 



THE NEW" ENGLAND PLAN. 229 

to do so. Upon this point there was much doubt. The 
status of the loyalists had not yet been determined. 
The treaty was still pending. Its terms might ensure 
restitution for their losses and security for the future, 
or it might do the opposite. That remained to be seen. 
Then there was no certainty that all the States would 
take the same action upon this subject. It might prove 
to be possible for a Tory bishop to live in one section, 
and be outlawed in another. In view of these contin- 
gencies he was, if consecrated, to return to Connecticut 
if that course should be open ; if that should be closed, 
then to fix his seat in some other State. If all should 
be barred against him, then he was to make his habita- 
tion across the border in Nova Scotia. There he could 
be reached by candidates for ordination without the bur- 
den of crossing the sea, and from there he could look 
oat and superintend the Church's growth in New 
England, while he and it would wait for better times. 
The scheme had the indorsement of Sir Guy Carleton, 
and Dr. Seabury sailed away to England in the re- 
turning flag-ship of Admiral Digby 1 to carry it into 
effect. 

Upon his arrival he found the prospect of success very 
Thesentimsnt sma ^ indeed. The bishops, however they 
m England, might sympathize with the colonial Church, 
were chagrined at the defeat of the British power. 
Lowth, the great Bishop of London, had flatly refused 
to lay his hands upon any man who was going back to 
America to preach, 2 even though he had been assured 

1 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, FP- "*>> 9G- 

2 McMaster: History of the United States, vol. i. p. 230. 



230 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

that Parliament would not demur at his omitting the 
oaths. 1 To the current conception of the nature of the 
Episcopal office, it seemed even more absurd to give it 
to the petty States than it would have been to give it to 
the colonies, where it could at least have had the moral 
support of the English kingdom. The bishops were 
stolid, impracticable, hopeless. While they treated 
Seabury with consideration, and a few of them mani- 
fested a curious interest in American affairs, they were 
incapable of appreciating, as the Americans did, the kind 
of an Episcopate which was desired. They were con- 
cerned about the "dignity" of the office. There was 
no suitable provision for the proper support 2 of Dr. Sea- 
bury, so that he might live in a style which a bishop 
ought to maintain. The office would fall into contempt. 3 
Moreover, their hands were tied. The law required 
that a bishop, at his consecration, must swear allegiance 
to the Crown. They shook their heads when it was 
suggested that the king in council might waive that 
requirement. That seemed sufficient to a few, but to 

most it appeared that an Act of Parliament 
bishops' only could give exemption. Beside that, they 

feared that if they should overcome all diffi- 
. culties and consecrate an American bishop, it would be 

construed as an unfriendly act by the new States, who 



) 



1 Abbey: English Church and its Bishops, vol. ii. p. 186. 

2 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, p. 111. 

3 This idea was slow to disappear. After the middle of the present 
century, when Bishop Wilberforce had fixed, by his example, the modern 
standard, an old don complained that — "I remember when a bishop never 
came into Oxford without a coach and six. But what 'does Sam do ? 
Just mounts his horse, without even a groom behind him, and rides away 
to a visitation before breakfast! " 



THE NEW ENGLAND PLAN. 231 

had now taken their place in the family of nations. 
England had had trouble enough with America ; why 
should they provoke her further? Her opinion had 
always been pronounced against this action, and the 
bishops could not see that the ground of the opposition 
had dropped out when the Church became innocuous on 
its political side. 

In addition to all this, they were by no means satis- 
fied that Connecticut would receive Bishop Seabury if 
he should be consecrated. If this should turn out to be 
the case, they would have on their hands a churchless 
bishop, who would be an awkward personage to dispose 
of. This last difficulty was met by showing the declara- 
tion of all the leading members of the Connecticut 
Legislature, to the effect that there would be no political 
objection whatever to receiving the new bishop, but 
that, on the contrary, there were so many Episcopalians 
in the State that it would be for the public good to give 
them a head. 

After interminable delay, an Act of Parliament was 
introduced to allow a dispensation from the oaths, in 
the case of bishops consecrated for foreign countries. 
The bishops gave a tardy assent, but the preliminary 
requirements were endless. When a whole year had 
passed, Dr. Seabury was at the end of his patience and 
of his money. He was a poor man. He had been living 
for a year in London at his own expense, and there 
seemed to be no more prospect than when he had first 
come. He therefore turned his back upon England 
and her impotent, State -bound Church, and went to 
Scotland. 



232 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

The influence upon the American Church of Sea- 
bury's Scotch connection has been so far-reaching that 
The Scotch it is necessary here to suspend the story long 
and New enough to trace its origin. In Scotland there 
churches. were two Episcopal Churches, neither of 
which recognized the other. 1 At the Revolution of 
1688, when the Stuarts were deported, and William 
of Orange came to the throne, the Episcopalians and 
Presbyterians in Scotland were not unequally divided. 2 
William offered the support of the government to the 
Episcopalians, but they would have nothing to do with 
him. They declared their unalterable loyalty to the 
Stuart line. When the bishops to a man, and most of 
the clergy and people, turned their backs upon his offer, 
he gave his patronage to the Presbyterians. Presby- 
tery was established, and Episcopacy was proscribed. 
The " Non- The bishops and clergy who refused to take 
jurors." William's oath — and hence were called non- 
jurors — were deprived and their places filled by Pres- 
byterians. Those of the clergy who did take the oath 
were protected, but placed under the sharp oversight of 
the Presbyterian General Assembly. Then succeeded a 
dreadful century for Scotch Episcopalians. Even though 
it cannot be denied that they had brought the evils on 
themselves by their factious attachment to the wretched 
\ Stuarts, still, their stubborn fixity of purpose in follow- 

ing their twisted consciences must excite admiration. 
Their marked feature was their Jacobitism. Attach- 
ment to their royal line was with them a religious cult. 



I 



1 Abbey: English Church and Bishops, vol. ii. pp. 176-187. 

2 Grub: Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 316. 



THE NEW ENGLAND PLAN. 233 

James Stuart was the " anointed of the Lord." After 
him they turned to poor " Prince Chairlie," and took 
him to their hearts. "When Charles Edward, the 
debauched "Chevalier," died, in 1788, their last idol 
was broken, but they continued even then to offer a 
sentimental devotion before an empty throne. In the 
risings of 1715 and 1745, the Episcopalians were the 
head and front. After the last, the English government 
proceeded deliberately to extirpate them as a brood of 
inveterate treason-hatchers. After Culloden, the Duke 
of Cumberland, by the King's command, burned every 
chapel in his path. Scotch orders were declared null 
and void. 1 It was made a penal offence for more than 
five nonjurors to assemble for worship. They were 
driven into holes and corners. The well-disposed clergy 
and men in English orders were introduced as far 
as possible. These latter were regarded by the non- 
jurors as intruders, and they in turn called the others 
traitors. The Scotch Episcopalians were detested 
equally by Scotch Presbyterians and English Church- 
men. It was an open question whether the Churches 
in the two kingdoms Avere even in communion. 2 
Whether they were or not, they certainly were not 
in sympathy. The Scotch were all Jacobites and all 
High Churchmen, and in these respects had few i:i 
England like them. Two Liturgies had been in use in 
Scotland for a century and a half. In Edinburgh and 
the south the English was adopted ; but at Aberdeen 

1 This was the ground of the constant complaint made hy the Church- 
men of Virginia and Maryland, at that date, that the clergy who came 
over to them were " Scotchmen." 

2 Gruh: Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 370. 



234 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

and the north the Liturgy in use was substantially the 
first Prayer-Book of Edward VI. In its sacramental 
teaching it was far more emphatic than the English 
book. After a long and earnest controversy, this Lit- 
urgy, in a revised form, was adopted for general use in 
Scotland in 1764. By that time the repressive laws 
had been allowed quietly to become relaxed so that the 
nonjuring remnant, which had its existence mainly 
about Aberdeen and the Northern Highlands, could 
meet without molestation. 

It was to the bishops of this obscure and broken 
body that Dr. Seabury turned when he despaired of 
English consecration. He found in them men of his 
own spiritual kin. They welcomed him as a man after 
their own heart. Bishop John Skinner possessed a sort 
of private chapel, made by throwing together the upper 
rooms of his modest house in Aberdeen. In that 
chapel Dr. Seabury was consecrated bishop, November 
14, 1784. His consecrators were Robert Kilgour, Arthur 
Petrie, and John Skinner. They and their Church had 
a strange similarity to him and his. Both Churches 
had, through their political situation, been driven to 
emphasize strongly the divine side of Episcopacy. They 
both had their homes in the midst of a hostile Presbyte- 
rian community. They had each been trained to recog- 
nize a king who was hateful to their fellow-citizens. 
The people in both cases had learned to live their 
religious lives apart from the people among whom they 
dwelt. They were not readily touched by the spirit 
of their time and place. Their spirit was, at its best, 
serene, assured, self-contained. But it had, and has, 



THE NEW ENGLAND PLAN. 235 

its besetting sins. The Churchmen of the nonjuring, 
Seabury type have been often found to be impractica- 
ble, narrow, prejudiced, governed in their actions by 
inherited sentiments rather than by present facts. But 
they brought to the building of the American Church 
its clearly denned architecture. This principle was 
guaranteed, as far as was possible to do, by the Concor- 
dat agreed to by Seabury and the Scotch Episcopal 
College. 1 This secured the principle of national auton- 
omy by the pledge that the American Church would 
hold no fellowship with the intruding Episcopal organi- 
zation in Scotland. It insured Catholic doctrine by the 
pledge that Seabury would use his endeavor to have 
the Scotch Communion Office given place in the Ameri- 
can Liturgy, — a pledge which he was able to redeem. 

Thus, after the labors of one hundred and seventy- 
five years, there was, when Bishop Seabury returned, 
an Episcopal Church in America. 

He became rector of the parish at New London. He 
called a convocation of the -Connecticut clergy, dis- 
played his certificates of consecration, received their 
pledge of canonical obedience, avowed the principles 
which would control his work, and began the Church's 
share in the task of making and keeping a new nation 
Christian. 

1 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, p. 150. 



236 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHUPvCH. 






CHAPTER III. 

THE FEDERAL IDEA. 

Philadelphia was the American College of States- 
manship. As the meeting-place of the Continental 
Colonial Congress, and, for the most part, the seat of 

t ! a ! mnsi ° government, it brought together that re- 
ship- markable group of men who may truthfully 
be called the builders of the nation. It was the meet- 
ing-place of Franklin, Washington, Jay, Madison, Jef- 
ferson, Hamilton, Randolph, and Morris. These men 
were at once students and teachers. They differed 
widely among themselves as to the exact appearance 
which the new nation would present when established, 
but upon one thing they all agreed, — America was a 
nation. She had and must have an independent life of 
her own. Beside that, they saw clearly that the vari- 
ous sections of the country were so intimately bound 
together that their interests must be in common. The 
long-drawn debates through which the Federal Consti- 
tution was fashioned, and the popular tumults amidst 
which it got itself adopted, all ended by fixing upon the 
public mind the firm conviction which the leading Fed- 
eralists had held from the beginning, that the nation is 
one, and must be bound together in a common govern^ 
menu 

The Rev. William White, rector of Christ Chun** 



THE FEDERAL IDEA. 237 

Philadelphia, had spent his whole life in close acquaint- 
ance with these statesmen. He approached the problem 
Rev. Dr. °f the American Church in the same spirit 
White, that they did the American State. None of 

his contemporaries surpassed and few equalled him in 
sagacity. When the war ended he was thirty-five years 
old. He was well born, well bred, and well educated, 1 
both in this country and abroad. In England he was a 
friend of Dr. Johnson ; had him for his guest at his 
inn ; chatted with him while he watched him at work 
on his lexicon ; supped with him at Kensington ; and 
wrote him when he came back to Philadelphia. 2 He 
was on familiar terms with Goldsmith, visited him, 
praised his work, and condoled with him that so clever 
a man should have to harness his genius to a cart to 
earn his daily bread. 3 He was ordained in England ; 
became Assistant, and soon after Rector of Christ 
Church, Philadelphia \ was chosen Chaplain of Con- 
gress ; and, when the war ended, was next after Frank- 
lin, the leading citizen of the State. While Dr. Smith, 
of Maryland, was engrossed with the small economies of 
a struggling college, and Dr. Seabury was observing the 
petty routine of an infantry barracks, Dr. White was 
unconsciously learning the statecraft which .guided the 
founders of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

He took the first step by calling together a few 
friends at his own house 4 to talk over the situation. 

1 White: Memoirs, Introduction of Dr. DaCosta, p. liii 
1 Norton: Life of Bishop White, p. 10. 

1 Wilson : Life of Bishop White. 

2 Norton: Life of Bishop White, p. 21. 

3 lb., p. 21. 

i White: Memoirs, p. ( J3. 



238 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

No plan of procedure was proposed, but the men pres- 
ent were found to be of the same mind with him. 

In May of 1784, there was a meeting in New Bruns- 
wick, N. J., of the managers of the " Society for the 
Relief of the Widows and Orphans of Clersy- 

The confer- . . . * . &J 

encsatNew men. I his society had been organized 
twenty years before, and at the outbreak of 
the war had held considerable funds. Its board was 
made up of members from New York, New Jersey, 
and Pennsylvania, acting conjointly. They had had no 
meeting for more than seven years. Now they came 
together to re-organize. When their business was 
transacted, they fell to discussing the general condi- 
tion of the Church. Some prominent laymen who 
chanced to be at the same place were called in to 
assist. During the discussion they learned for the first 
time 2 of the action which Connecticut had taken. So 
secretly had the New England people carried forward 
their project that the Churchmen of the Middle colonies 
were in ignorance of it, though Dr. Seabury, the bishop- 
elect, had already been in England for nearly a year ! 
In point of fact, the people of the two sections dis- 
trusted each other equally. In the East they feared the 
" latitudinarianism " of the South ; in the South they 
dreaded the " ecclesiasticism " of the East. Can this 
difference be a permanent affair of latitude ? 

The result of the informal discussion at Brunswick 
was to issue a call for a conference of Churchmen from 
all the States, to be held at New York, in October of 
the same year. Delegations came to this meeting from 

1 White: Memoirs, p. 84. 



THE FEDERAL IDEA. 239 

Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Mary- 
land, Virginia, and Connecticut. The Connecticut del- 
egation stated at the outset, however, that they were 
not at liberty to take any formal part in the delil> 
erations while they were awaiting the result of Dr. 
Seabury's journey to England. The others present 
proceeded to formulate some general and fundamental 
principles of organization to be recommended for adop- 
Fundamentai tion by the churches in the several States. 1 
principles. Those principles contemplated: («.) A Fed- 
eral, Constitutional Church ; (6) the several States to 
be its units ; (c) its governing body to include both 
clergy and laymen ; (c?) the maintenance of continuity 
with the Church of England, making such changes in 
worship and discipline only as the changed political 

1 The leading mind in formulating these principles was Dr. White. 
As finally adopted by the united Church, they were substantially the 
same that he submitted to the first little group of clergy at his own 
house in Philadelphia. The form in which they were submitted to the 
States for action was as follows: — 

First, That there be a General Convention of the Episcopal Church 
in the United States of America. 

Second, That the Episcopal Church in each State send Deputies to the 
Convention, consisting of Clergy and Laity. 

Third, That associated congregations, in two or more States, may send 
Deputies jointly. 

Fourth, That the said Church shall maintain the doctrines of the 
Gospel as now held by the Church of Enr/land, and shall adhere to the 
Liturgy of the said Church, as far as shall be consistent with the Ameri- 
can Revolution, and the Constitution of the respective States. 

Fifth, That- in every State where there shall be a Bishop duly conse- 
crated and settled, he shall be considered as a member of the Convention 
ex officio. 

Sixth, That the Clergy and Laity assembled in Convention, shall 
deliberate in one body, but shall vote separately, and the concurrence of 
both shall be necessary to give validity to every measure. 

Seventh, That no powers be delegated to a general ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment, except such as cannot conveniently be exercised by the Clergy 
and Laity in their respective congregations. 



240 THE PROTESTANT EPTSCOPAL CHURCH. 

situation might render necessary ; (e) to confer no 
powers upon the general body save such as could not 
conveniently be exercised by the several local churches. 
The few clergy in Massachusetts and to the eastward 
were not present, but held a conference of their own, at 
which they adopted substantially the same fundamental 
principles. 

The conference had no power to do more than recom- 
mend to the churches such principles or actions as 
seemed to its members desirable. But there was no 
prince or parliament to summon a council, so this con- 
ference ventured to do so. They issued a call sum- 
Constitutionai moning the churches in the several States to 
Convention. senc [ delegates to a Constitutional Conven- 
tion to be held at Philadelphia on St. Michael's Day, 
September, 1785. New York, New Jersey, Penn- 
sylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and South 
Carolina responded with representatives. Connecticut 
declined ; Massachusetts sent a letter. When the Con- 
vention met, two conflicting plans of procedure Avere 
confronted. The ecclesiastical idea of New England 
and the federal idea of the Middle colonies were now 
face to face. 1 

The former insisted that nothing could be done un- 
less they began the business at the right end. The 
Two possible nrs ^ thing necessary is to secure bishops ; 
policies. nothing binding can be enacted by the Church 
until the Church is present ; the Church is not present 
and cannot be until its chief officers are on the 
ground ; anything which such conventions as this may 

1 White: Memoirs, p. 109. 



THE FEDERAL IDEA. 241 

do will be but as the arrangements which children 
might make in a household while the father is abroad ; 
when he comes he may set them all aside ; the bishop is 
the source of authority ; in his absence there is no 
authority. 1 

The other side urged in reply, that if the father has 
his rights and powers the children ' also have theirs ; in 
this case the children are quite grown up and capable ; 
their action, within its proper sphere, is legitimate and 
will be valid. In addition, the practical difficulties in 
the way of the other scheme were insurmountable. 
Who could determine what number of clergy or par- 
ishes should have the right to choose a bishop? Shall 
it be the clergy of a State? But by what authority 
is a political territory made a boundary for the Church's 
action ? What is to hinder any group of half a dozen 
clergy anywhere to combine and choose a bishop ? The 
outcome would be confusion worse confounded. Half a 
dozen " bishoprics " might spring up in the same State. 
And even if they should be confined to a single one 
for each State, what assurance could be given that they 
would come into federation? Unless some constitution 
and law could be agreed upon in advance, only anarchy 
could be looked for. 

Guided by this view, the Convention proceeded to its 
momentous task without New England. The constitu- 
tion of the Episcopal Church they then elaborated is a 
document worthy of profound attention. If the Pres- 
byterians may claim to have produced the spirit and 

i White: Memoirs, p. 112. 

1 Beardsley: Life of Bishop Seabury, p. 23-4. 



242 THE PROTESTANT EFISCOPAL CHURCH. 

form of the Declaration of Independence, 1 Churchmen 

may claim with a better right to have laid down the 

lines of the National Constitution. The truth is that in 

both cases a striking coincidence is all. The 

State and . ° . . 

Church Con- constitution of the Church in point of time 
preceded that of the nation. But they were 
the handiwork of the same men, and the result of the 
same set of circumstances. Dr. White and Dr. Smith 
had been fellow-students in statecraft with those 
mighty men who built and launched the ship of State. 
Their opportunity to put their principles in form came 
when they applied them to the Church's constitution. 2 
In its salient features it anticipated that other one 
which was given to the American people five years 
later. It contemplated : (cl) a national organization ; 
(b} the States to be its component units ; (<?) its gov- 
erning body to be composed of two orders, clergy and 
laity ; 3 ((i) each State to retain in its own hand a sov- 
ereign authority, and to conduct its own affairs. On 
its political side these were its cardinal features. In 
addition it provided for things ecclesiastical and doc- 
trinal. There was to be : 4 (a) a Triennial Convention; 
(5) bishops when obtained were to be ex-offieio members 
of the convention ; (<?) persons were to be admitted 
to Orders upon subscription generally to the Holy 

1 "The Mecklenburg Declaration," Craighead: Scotch and Irish 
Seeds, p. 327. 

1 Briggs: American Presbyterianism, p. 349. 

2 It was draughted by Dr. White. White: Memoirs, p. 93. 

3 Bishop Seabury's contention that the bishops should constitute a 
still third house disarranged the scheme as it lay in Bishop White's 
mind. The bahmce was restored again by merging into one house the 
first two proposed. 

4 Journal of Convention of 1785. 



THE FEDERAL IDEA. 243 

Scriptures, and a pledge of canonical obedience to the 
ecclesiastical authorities ; (cT) the English Prayer-Book 
was to be the basis of the Liturgy, but to be modified 
so as to bring it into agreement with the new political 
arrangements. 

The provision in its fundamental law for the admis- 
sion of the laity into the Church's governing body as 

an independent estate deserves particular re- 
Laymen in L 
Church mark. It proposed an arrangement which had 

not been in operation for fifteen centuries, — 
probably for sixteen. It was a return to the practice of 
the most primitive period. Those who were under the 
domination of the ecclesiastical ideas which had been 
current at least since Constantine's time, like Bishop 
Seabuiy and his felloAV-prelates in England, stumbled 
at it. It was true that kings and princes had for cent- 
uries had a potential voice in causes ecclesiastic, but 
this had not been in their capacity as laymen, but as 
"ministers ordained of God." The plan proposed was 
radically different, and it had no contemporary illustra- 
tion. The churches then in existence which were or- 
ganized after the Independent fashion were based upon 
the theory which they still maintain, — that there is no 
genuine distinction between priests and laymen. To 
their view they are both alike, and equally, " kings and 
priests unto God." In the Presbyterian scheme the 
elders, who at first glance might be taken for laymen, 
were not so, but were ordained men. For the scheme 
proposed by the Church, which has as an organizing prin- 
ciple the doctrine of the Ministry, there was no example 
extant, and it had no imitators for many a year. It is 



/ 

\ 



244 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

the key to a proper understanding of the Church's legis- 
lation since its adoption. Its radical defect, in the form 
first proposed, was that it provided no proper place for 
the intrinsic differences of power and right among the 
orders of the Ministry. It shut the Episcopate out from 
its proper place. Bishop Seabury became the champion 
of his order. Fortunately, in the issue his candid, though 
determined spirit, together with Dr. White's sagacity 
and incomparable diplomacy, effected that coalescence 
of the two views which is the Church's present posses- 
sion. But before the consummation was reached much 
was to be done. 

The Convention proceeded to the second item of its 
agenda. 

The English Prayer-Book had been in use ever since 
the planting of the colonies. The somewhat supersti- 
Revisi the tious reverence for it, however, which, half a 
Prayer-Book. century later, came to regard it as incapable 
of being changed, did not then generally prevail. Some 
changes in it were imperative. It was English, and the 
Church was American. It must either be made catho- 
lic, so as to be of universal fitness, or the political por- 
tions of it must be made American also. The Convention 
approached the revision of it with a light-heartedness 
somewhat startling to those who are familiar with the 
arduous labors of later years in the same line. The 
first purpose entertained was to change only its political 
portions, but, the task being once entered upon, the op- 
portunity to make other desired alterations seemed too 
good to be thrown away. A committee of one clergy- 
man and one layman from each State represented was 



THE FEDERAL IDEA. 245 

appointed to submit to the Convention a schedule of 
changes deemed desirable. 1 After three days' work of 
the committee, they reported the revised book. The 
Convention spent four days in considering the proposed 
changes, by which time they had taken action upon all 
that related to political things. There they rested, and 
referred the other propositions back to the committee, to 
be acted upon by them after adjournment. There was 
a lack of clearness in the instructions, which left the 
committee in doubt as to whether they were to com- 
plete the revision and publish the book, or whether they 
were to report their work to the next Convention for 
approval. They acted upon the former opinion, com- 
pleted their task, and published that edition of the 
The "Pro- Common Prayer known as the " Proposed 
posed Book." Book." The work was done chiefly by Dr. 
Smitli of Maryland and Dr. White of Pennsylvania, 
having before them the opinions which the other mem- 
bers of the committee had expressed generally before 
they departed to their far-away homes. 

The changes from the English Prayer-Book may be 
grouped conveniently into five categories. The exam- 
ples, by no means exhaustive, here set forth under 
each, will give a conception of the " Proposed Book's " 
peculiarities. 

(1) Political : — Prayers for the king's majesty, for 
the princes, royal family, and for the High Court of 
Parliament, were stricken out, and in their stead were 
placed the prayers for the President and for the Congress. 

The observation of the 5th November, the 30th Janu- 

1 Convention Journal, 1785. 



J 






'* 



246 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

ary, the 29th May, and the 25th October was omitted, 
and instead thereof a service was inserted for the 4th 
July, " being the Anniversary of Independence." 

(2) Changes in the Interest of Taste : — Such as, 
"didst humble thyself to be born of a virgin," for 
" didst not abhor the virgin's womb ; " omitting the 
plain-spoken and objectionable statement of the pur- 
pose of matrimony from the exhortation in the Mar- 
riage Service ; omitting the " Commination, or denoun- 
cing of God's anger and judgment against sinners ; " 
numerous verbal changes of phrases which were deemed 
inept or inelegant. 

(3) Anti-Sacerdotal Changes : — For example, substi- 
tuting " A Declaration to be made by the Minister 
concerning the Forgiveness of Sins," for "The Absolu- 
tion or Remission of Sins to be pronounced by the 
Priest ; " omitting the sign of the cross in Baptism ; 
omitting the phrase " regenerate " in the post-baptismal 
exhortation ; changing in the Catechism the definition 
of the effect of Baptism from "made a member of 
Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom 
of Heaven," to " made a member of the Christian 
Church ; " omitting " unbaptized " from the limitations 
of use in the Burial Service. 1 

(4) Changes in the Interest of Liberty : — The selec- 
tions of Psalms to be used to be left to the discretion of 
the Minister ; and likewise the Scripture Lessons. 

(5) Dogmatic Changes : — The Athanasian and the 
Nicene Creeds were omitted ; the " descent into hell " 

1 The animus of the changes under this head is evident from the fact 
that the hook was long afterward reprinted for use by the followers of 
Bishop Cummins. 



THE FEDERAL IDEA. 247 

was left out of the Apostles' Creed ; the Gloria Patri 
was omitted after the versicles, after each separate 
psalm, and generally its use reduced to a minimum ; 
the phrase "damnation" in the Communion Warning 
was altered into " condemnation ; " the words " as our 
hope is this our brother doth," were dropped from the 
Burial Service, — and the like. 

Two of the categories deserve special consideration. 

The Introduction of the Office for the Fourth of July 

was a source of much uneasiness. The large 

Service for . . f 

Fourth of majority of the clergy and people were 

Tories. It was asking a good deal to expect 
them to adopt the frame of thankfulness which the 
service postulates. It was much as though the Confed- 
erate States' Churchmen, after the Civil War, should 
have been required to return thanks for the surrender 
at Appomattox. It was introduced against the strenu- 
ous opposition of Dr. White and such unquestionable 
patriots as he. 1 But, as is so likely to be the case, 
the class of men whom General Grant graphically de- 
scribed as those " who did not get warmed up until the 
fight was over," prevailed to have it introduced, and the 
Tory members of the Convention allowed it to pass in 
silence. In after years it might well have found a 
place among the Offices, but at the time it could but 
be a stumbling-block. When adopted, Dr. White, who 
had striven against it, was almost the only man who 
used it. 2 Only in two or three places outside of Phila- 
delphia was it ever heard. 

1 White : Memoirs, p. 117. 

2 lb., p. 119. 



248 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

The other list is that of dogmatic changes. A glance 
at them will show that the revisers either doubted the 
U Anti-do?- truth or questioned the form of statement 

matic spirit. f certain doctrines which were and are gen- 
erally held to be of prime importance. Foremost among 
them is the dogma of the Trinity. Their treatment of 
it leads to the inquiry whether they were at all, and, if 
so, to what extent, under the influence of the Unitarian 
movement then beginning to attract attention in 
America? 

As has been pointed out, the Deistical infidelity so 
rife in England and so prolific of evil in the English 
life of the eighteenth century, never reached the same 
extent in this country, but yet it made itself felt. 
About 1760 the negative Deism began to take on the 
positive form of what has since been called Unitarian- 
ism, under the lead of Lardner and Priestly. 1 In the 
colonies it retained its negative form, and in that shape 
spread widely. The scepticism of Hume and Gibbon 
dominated many educated men. It was especially preva- 
lent in the Middle and Southern colonies. 2 In Boston 
and its neighborhood it put on the dogmatic dress of 
Unitarianism. In that shape it came sharply in contact 
Unitarian- with the Church. The minister in charge of 
ism. King's Chapel, Mr. Freeman, a man who had 

not yet been ordained in any wise, was a pronounced 
Unitarian. The majority of the congregation agreed 
with him. They found the English Prayer-Book un- 
suited to their use, and revised it so as to eliminate the 

1 Abbey: English Church and Bishops, vol. ii. p. 129. 

2 Sabine: Loyalists, vol. i. p. 141. 



THE FEDERAL IDEA. 249 

doctrine of the Trinity. King's Chapel still called 
itself a parish of the Episcopal Church. When Bishop 
Seabury returned with his office, he was asked to ordain 
Freeman. He emphatically declined. Bishop Provoost 
of New York was afterwards solicited to do the same. 
He neither complied nor refused, but referred the matter 
to the Convention for advice and consent. The advice 
was adverse. 1 But the King's Chapel people declared 
that they were justified in hoping that Bishop Provoost 
would comply, on account of what they knew to be his 
own sentiment as well as that of some of his brethren 
in Pennsylvania and the South. 2 They said that .he, 
had proposed in the Convention at Philadelphia to omit 
the Invocations to the Son, the Holy Ghost, and the 
Trinity, from the Litany. 3 Such a proposition had been 
made in the Convention 4 by another person, and there 
is reason to believe that it expressed a prevalent feeling, 
not in favor of Unitarianism, but against the attempt to 
dogmatize upon the great mysteries of religion. 5 This 
seems to be the key to the final action of the Church in 
both directions. They cast out the Athanasian Creed, 
not because they disbelieved it, but because they dis- 
liked it as an impotent attempt to state what cannot be 

1 History of Unitarianism: fourth edition, Boston, 1815, p. 13. 

2 lb., p. 13. 

3 Rev. Dr. DaCosta, in editing the memoirs of Bishop White, flatly 
denies the truth of this statement, and refers to Wilson's Life of Bishop 
White for its refutation (p. 325). The correspondence of Bishop White 
there printed does not seem to furnish the refutation. The categorical 
assertion of Mr. Belsham appears, in the absence of both evidence and 
probability to the contrary, to be correct. 

4 White: Memoirs, p. 116. 

5 Bishop White says: " I am no friend to these metaphysical distinc- 
tions which have perplexed the present subject and discredited Divine 
truth." Wilson: Life of Bishop White, p. 325. 



250 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHUPvCH. 

stated. On the other hand, they would not ordain Mr. 
Freeman even to retain the King's Chapel congregation, 
because they equally disliked the dogmatic spirit of 
Unitarianism. This seeming lack of certitude, want of 
definiteness in doctrine, this repugnance to nice defini- 
tions, was altogether distasteful to the New England 
Church. 1 For this, in some places, as well as for the 
very opposite reason in others, the Proposed Book was 
received by the Church generally with scant favor. 
The best proof of this was that it would not sell. 2 
Even when Dr. White had packages of them sent North 
and South, and advertised assiduously, they still stood 
on the booksellers' shelves. New England would not 
touch it. New Jersey flatty rejected it. Maryland 
wanted the Nicene Creed put back, and South Carolina 
wanted still more left out. Pennsylvania and Virginia 
proposed still further amendments. The parishes gen- 
erally kept on using the English Book, to which they 
were accustomed, the officiating minister making such 
changes as he found necessary. 

Having formulated a Constitution and taken the 
action which they believed would settle a Liturgy, the 
The Epis- Convocation proceeded to consider the Epis- 
copate, copate. In this also, their purpose of a 
National Church controlled. They had no mind to 
send one of their number abroad for consecration, as 
Bishop Seabury had gone, accredited only by a little 
group of unknown clergymen. Whoever went should 

1 Bishop Seabury's Second Charge. 
1 Beardsley : Life of Seabury, p. 267. 

1 Perry: Hist., vol. ii. p. 119. 

2 Beardsley: Seabury, p. 309. 



THE FEDERAL IDEA. 251 

go with a backing and authority which would compel a 
speedy answer for or against their request. Indeed the 
leaders among them had determined not to go at all 
without an assurance in advance that they would gain 
their object. 1 To secure this they drew up an Address 
to the Archbishops and Bishops of England, 

Address to ^ . . , 

the English In it they set forth the situation in which 

the Episcopal Churches had been left by the 
result of the War for Independence ; acknowledge the 
benefits they had received from the Mother Church in 
former days; declare their intention not to approach 
the English State in any wise ; and ask the Bishops 
purely in their spiritual capacity to consecrate such fit 
men as the Convention representing the American 
Episcopal Church may send. They intimate plainly 
that if any legal obstacles should be in the way of the 
Bishops acting in the matter, it must be their own 
concern to have them removed. 

With the Address were sent certificates from the 
Executives of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and 
Virginia, to the effect that there was no political obsta- 
cle on this side of the ocean, and that the Church, when 
its organization should have been completed by bishops, 
would be allowed entire liberty to live unmolested. 2 
The whole was intrusted to John Adams, the Ameri- 
can ambassador in England. Though anything but a 
Churchman himself, he performed the duty required of 



1 White: Memoirs, p. 139. " They who went had all along made up 
their minds not to go until the way should be opened by previous 
negotiation." 

2 White: Memoirs, p. 22. 



252 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

him with interest and zeal. 1 He laid the Address and 
accompanying certificates before the Archbishop in 
such a way as to secure immediate and practical 
attention. 

Meanwhile the Convention adjourned to wait a reply. 
When it came it was not very satisfactory. Upon the 
The Bishops' general question, the Bishops answered, that 
reply. i-i iev we re ready and willing to consecrate, 

but that there were some things which needed to first 
be cleared up. Queer stories had come to them about 
this Philadelphia Convention. It was reported that 
they had thrown overboard all the Church's Creeds, or, 
at least, had reduced them to a point where they could 
hardly be seen ; that they had torn the Prayer-Book all 
to shreds ; that they had adopted a Constitution which 
gave laymen an unheard-of power in the Church, even 
to the extent of making it possible for them to pass 
judgment on bishops ; while to the bishops themselves 
no real power was given. These matters needed expla- 
nation. Until further information should be received 
they could take no action. If a satisfactory explana- 
tion could be given, or if the obnoxious arrangements 
should be modified, they stood ready to consecrate. 

Upon receipt of this reply the Convention was hastily 
summoned to meet at Wilmington in October, 1786. 
The meeting was short and effective. They prepared 
an answer, saying that the Bishops had misapprehended 
the position given to the laity in the new Constitution ; 

1 " There is no part of my life on which I look back with more satis- 
faction than the part I took, bold, daring, and hazardous as it was to me 
and mine, in the introduction of Episcopacy in America." — John Adams, 
in Letter to Bishop White. Wilson: Life of Bishop White, p. 325. 



THE FEDERAL IDEA. 253 

that the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed, unmu- 
tilated, would be retained ; that the English Prayer-Book 
should remain as the standard until it should be replaced 
b} r a National Convention with unquestioned power. 

Then they called the roll of States to know if any 
had chosen men for bishops. New York responded 
Bishops with the name of Dr. Provoost ; Pennsyl- 

chosen. vania w j t h t | iat f j)r White ; Virginia with 

Dr. Griffith. 

Maryland had chosen the celebrated Dr. Smith three 
years before. Distinguished above all the clergy of his 
time, a statesman, a theologian, a man of affairs, a Doctor 
of Divinity of Dublin and Aberdeen, the leader in the 
Southern Church, and the oft-chosen President of the 
Convention, he had grave defects of character, which led 
the Convention to pass him by in silence. 1 His politi- 
cal career had been open to serious criticism. He had 
an uncertain temper. He had determined enemies. 
His personal habits exposed him to criticism, even in a 
bibulous age. 

Dr. Griffith found himself to be too poor to make the 
journey to England, and the Church in Virginia failed 
to provide him with the means to pay his expenses. 2 

Drs. White and Provoost went their way to London, 
and were consecrated bishops in Lambeth Chapel, Feb- 
ruary 4, 1787. The next day they turned their faces 
homeward, and entered New York Harbor Easter Sun- 
da}', 1787, while the bells of Trinity were calling the 
people to church. 

i Smith : Life of Dr. Smith, vol. ii. pp. 450-466. 
2 Convention Journal of Va., 1787. May 19. 



254 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



i 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE TWO EPISCOPACIES. 

When Dr. Provoost returned to his work in Trinity 
Church, New York, and Dr. White to Christ Church, 
Philadelphia, commissioned to do the office and work of 
bishops, their presence completed the organization of a 
second Episcopal Church in America. Bishop Seabury 
had been at work in Connecticut for eighteen months. 
Rhode Island had placed herself under his ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction. Massachusetts and New Hampshire had 
asked for his episcopal oversight. 

Thus the New England Church had been built 

up around the ecclesiastical idea which animated the 

ten clergymen at Woodbury. The Federal idea had 

prevailed in the other States, but had stopped in its 

eastward progress at the Housatonic. Can 

The two . & 

Episcopal the two Churches, so diverse in sentiment, 

traditions, and ideals, ever coalesce ? The 

future of American Episcopacy is involved in the issue. 

Union seemed to be impossible. Their principles 

were antagonistic in essentials, and, what is far more 

potent in affecting action, their passions were deeply 

moved. In the East they were Tories; in the South 

they were Whigs. It was a time when political feeling 

was running higher than it has ever since done, with the 



THE TWO EPISCOPxVCIES. 255 

single exception of the period immediately preceding 
the Civil War. 1 A band of well-known gentlemen of 
position and standing had just vowed to murder Alex- 
ander Hamilton for only demanding common humanity 
in the treatment of Tories. 2 The laymen in the South 
Obstacles to could not forget that Bishop Seabury had 
union. been a British partisan, a British chaplain, 

and that his name was still borne on the rolls of the 
British army, in which he was yet receiving the pay of 
a retired officer, — a place which he kept till the day of 
his death. 3 Bishop Provoost entertained against him an 
implacable hostility, which he took no pains to conceal. 
He introduced into the convention of 1786 a resolution 
declaring Seabury 's bishopric invalid, 4 in which he 
expressed the general sentiment of the New York 
clergy. 

The New England people, on their part, were dis- 
trustful of the whole spirit of the Federal Church. 
They did not believe its leaders to be sound in the 
faith ; and were sure of their unsoundness in Church- 
manship. The place given to laymen in the Church's 
government by the new constitution seemed to them 
a subversion of ecclesiastical order and Catholic custom. 
The proposed Prayer-Book was abhorrent to them. It 
was a monstrosity. It emptied the Sacraments of all 
meaning, overturned ancient and venerable use, and 
trampled upon traditions. In doctrine the antagonism 

1 McMaster: History of the United States, vol. i. p. 128. 

2 Morse: Life of Hamilton, vol. i. p. 149. 

3 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 120. 

8 Norton : Life of Bishop Provcost, p. 134. 

4 White: Memoirs, p. 161. 






256 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

seemed to be still greater. The Convention had ruth- 
lessly thrown out the two chief symbols of the Faith, 
and mutilated the third. To be sure, they had restored 
the Nicene Creed, but the motive under which they 
replaced it was, if possible, worse than the one which 
had led to its omission. The Convention, in their view, 
were so unmindful of the awful prescription of the Creed 
that they were ready to strike it out for a caprice, and 
to restore it to gain the end they sought in England. 
What reason was there to believe that such Churchmen 
would ever become comfortable yokefellows with the 
sons of the New England converts, and the spiritual 
brethren of the Nonjurors? A federated Episcopacy 
was an idle and dangerous dream. 

So convinced were the Connecticut clergy of this, 

and so angered were they by the tone of their neighbors, 

that they set about to complete their own 

Plans to per- J L 

petuate the structure and make it permanently independ- 
ent. They had one bishop ; to be completely 
equipped, they would need two more. The ancient and 
wise custom of assuring against hasty consecration by 
requiring at least three bishops to join in every such 
act was recognized by both churches. The Connecticut 
clergy chose Dr. Jarvis to go to Scotland to the Non- 
jurors, as Dr. Seabury had done. 1 This would provide 
two. For the third they moved the clergy of Massa- 
chusetts to choose Dr. Parker of Boston, who, if chosen, 
might pursue the same course. In that event a New 
England hierarchy would be established in affiliation 
with the Scotch Church. Its high Churchmanship and 

1 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 77. 



THE TWO EPISCOPACIES. 257 

its soundness in the traditional faith would be guaran- 
teed in advance. Fortunately the scheme failed, and 
America was spared the pragmatic Church which would 
thus have risen. Closely related as it would have been 
with the impracticable Nonjurors, ,and out of sympathy 
with the political movement of Anurican life, it would 
have survived as a standing warning against Episco- 
pacy. But the danger of such an attempt being made 
was very real. Through Bishops Seabury and White it 
striving for was averted. Seabury's clear grasp of the 
unity. nature of the Episcopal office led him to see 

that the solidarity of the Episcopate in a national Church 
must be maintained. Other bishops were now present 
in America, and, let the estrangement from them and 
theirs be what it might, the fact must be recognized. 
He was quite alive to the political dislike in which he 
and his were held. He was still more alive to the 
laxity of the Federal Convention in doctrine and dis- 
cipline ; but he also saw the imperative need of union. 
Putting aside all personal considerations, he wrote to 
the newly made bishops a letter of greeting and God- 
speed. He offered them his brotherly hand. He as- 
sured them of his sympathy in their hope for a united 
Church ; that lie would work with them to that end ; 
that he would be glad to meet with them as bishops at 
any time and place to consult of the matter ; and in- 
vited them to be present at the Convocation to meet at 
Stamford in the coming Whitsuntide. Up to this time 
his difficulty had been that theie was no power in the 
Federal Church with which he could negotiate. Now 
there was : and to this power he offered his memo- 



\ 



258 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

randum. Bishop Provoost could hardly bring himself 
even to make a courteous reply to the proffer of the 
Tory ex- chaplain. But Bishop* White was quick to 
seize such an opportunity to further the federation. 
He replied that union was the prime object in his mind, 
as it had always been ; that if the changes in the Prayer- 
Book were the obstacle, he himself would be the first 
man to have them modified ; but, he states frankly, if 
the Connecticut people insist that the constitution be 
changed so as to lodge all power in the Episcopate, and 
to dislodge the lay order from practical share in Church 
government, then negotiation will be hopeless; in that 
case the most which could be hoped for would be that 
the Scotch -American and English -American Churches 
might live side by side as friendly neighbors. 1 This 
letter seems to mark the lowest point of Bishop White's 
hopefulness. What with Bishop Provoost's savage Whig- 
gery, the Virginia laymen's partisan feeling, and the 
quiet reluctance of the Connecticut clergy, the task 
seemed hopeless. 

As the Eastern clergy had sought for Dr. Parker of 
Boston to fill up the nonjuring triad, so Bishop White 
now sought for him to complete the English comple- 
ment. Dr. Griffith was still detained in Virginia by his 
poverty. Dr. Smith of Maryland, the other bishop-elect, 
was not improving either in temper or reputation, and, 
in any case, a quiet determination not to accept him is 
evident at every point. 2 So he also sought the Boston 
rector for the third, partly on account of his high charac- 

1 Bishop White's letter, quoted by Perry : History, vol. ii. p. 80. 

2 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 79. 



THE TWO EPISCOPACIES. 259 

tar, and partly as a strategic move to detach from Con- 
necticut the State which was likely to be her first ally. 

But the astute Parker had a project of his own. He 
had no notion of going for consecration to either London 
Dr. Parker's or Aberdeen ; indeed, he did not want the 
schema. office at all. But he did want the unity of 

the Church. To effect this he cooked a plan which put 
all the bishops in a corner. Through his management 
the few clergy in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, 
who had no great need or any wish for a bishop, decided 
to choose Dr. Bass of Newburyport for that office, and 
to send a formal request to all three Bishops now in the 
States to unite in his consecration. This, he thought, 
they could not, with any face, refuse to do. But if 
they should do it, then mutual recognition and practical 
unity would be an accomplished fact. Organic unity 
would come as a result. 

While the situation stood thus the time came for the 
Convention to meet at Philadelphia in July, 1789. The 
Convention presentation of the request of the Massachu- 
of 1789. setts people for the consecration of Dr. Bass 

brought up the whole question of the relation of the 
Churches. Could Connecticut and the Federal Bishops 
unite in this act? If not, why not? The issue was 
now, thanks to Dr. Parker, squarely before the Church, 
and must be disposed of. Bishop Seabury, though not 
present, was known to be willing to act. It was not 
thought that Bishop Provoost, also absent, would stand 
out against any agreement which might be reached. 
But the difficulty now was with Bishop White. 1 He 

1 White: Memoirs, p. 28. 



I 



260 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

would be only too glad, personally, to join in the conse- 
cration, but he felt that a tacit promise had been given 
to the English Bishops that no such action would be 
Bishop taken in this country till the full comple- 

White and men t f three in their line should be present, 
succession. It was true that no such explicit promise had 
been given, but then the Act of Parliament under 
which he and Provoost had been consecrated provided 
for three bishops, and it had only been through the 
accident of Dr. Griffith's detention that this had not 
been done. Besides this, and still more weighty, was 
the fact that the Scotch nonjuring Church, from which 
Seabury derived his Episcopate, was not recognized by 
the English Church. 1 Bishop White questioned whether 
two bishops of that line here ought to venture officially 
to do what the whole English Church would not do at 
home. 

The result of the deliberation was the adoption of a 
set of resolutions, which, it was believed, would har- 
monize all conflicting interests. They are a model of 
Christian temper and sagacity. 

The first resolution declares it to be the sense of the 
Convention that there subsists now in the United States 
" a complete order of bishops, derived as well under the 
English as the Scots line of Episcopacy." 2 This recog- 
nized the validity of Dr. Seabury 's consecration in the 
independent judgment of the American Episcopal 
Church. 

The second expands the first, and applies it : — these 

1 White: Memoirs, p. 163. 

1 Grub: Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 370. 

2 White: Memoirs, p. 396. 



THE TWO EPISCOPACIES. 20 1 

three Bishops have all the power which belongs to the 
office in respect of discipline, limited only by such 
canons as the entire Church may fix. 

The third declares that these powers should be exer- 
cised in the interest of the Church in any State which 
may need and require their use. 

The fourth explicitly requests Bishops Provoost and 
White to join with Bishop Seabury in the consecration 
of Dr. Bass. 

The fifth takes account of the difficulty in the way, 
and promises to address the English Bishops to have it 
removed, in case it should really exist, of which there 
is reason to doubt. 

This settled one of the points of disagreement. Two 
others still remained. The Constitution already adopted 
Adjusting ^id not give to the Episcopate a separate and 
differences, independent authority, and did give the laity 
an integral place in the Church's government. This 
the Connecticut people opposed. In the second place, 
the Prayer-Book, as it had been changed, was obnoxious 
to them. The Convention now reconsidered both these 
actions so far as to leave them open to be rediscussed 
and acted upon by the united Church, in case the 
Connecticut people should come in. 

Having done so much and notified Connecticut of its 
action, it took a recess till the following September, to 
await the result. When September came, Bishop Sea- 
bury came also. The whole Episcopal Church in the 
United States being now represented, the disputed 
articles in the Constitution were brought before it. 
Upon the general principle of admitting the laity to a 



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262 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

place in the government, the Convention stood firm. 
They, however, modified somewhat the application of it, 
and safeguarded it against the possibilities of evil which 
Bishop Seabury apprehended. 

In the matter of the place of the Episcopate in the 

government, Bishop Seabury's Toryism was like to have 

wrecked the whole enterprise. The lavmen 

Bishop Sea- r J 

bury'sTory- could not get over that British half-pay of 
his. This hateful fact bulked so before their 
eyes that they could not see the ecclesiastical question 
at issue. Fortunately Bishop White, the well-known 
patriot, was able to take them aside and show them that 
" ecclesiastical bodies needed not to be over-righteous, 
or more so than civil bodies, on such a point ; " 1 that 
this was a dead issue ; that the half-pay was for services 
rendered long ago, and did not prevent him now being 
a good citizen of Connecticut ; that he might even be 
returned to Congress from that State, and, if so, could 
take his seat with the half-pay in his pocket. The 
Bishop was able to persuade the Whig gentlemen to 
keep silence. The Constitution was changed to the 
extent of constituting the Bishops a separate House, 
only providing that a four-fifths vote of the other House 
might override their action. With this, Connecticut 
was fain to be content. 

In the matter of a Liturgy, the Proposed Book found 
Adopting a no one to sav a g 00 & word for it. It was re- 
Liturgy, solved that the point of departure should be 
the English Prayer-Book in common use ; that it should 
be revised so as to bring it into harmony with the politi- 

1 White: Memoirs, p. 168. 



THE TWO EPISCOPACIES. 263 

cal status. These changes were made with care and 
caution. The Fourth of July service departed into 
obscurity with the book which contained it. 

An Office for the Visitation of Prisoners, from the 
Irish Prayer-Book ; the Thanksgiving Day Service from 
the Proposed Book ; and a Form of Family Prayer 
were all adopted. The Convention would not accept 
the Athanasian Creed on any terms, though Bishop 
Seabury strenuously urged it. But it accepted at his 
hands the Prayers of Consecration from the Scotch 
Book. 

These things being done, the Connecticut people form- 
ally gave in their adhesion ; the two rival 
Churches ceased to strive ; and there became 
one Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. 



264 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



) 



CHAPTER V. 

STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT. 

The United States and the Protestant Episcopal 
Church were organized the same year and largely by 
the same hands. In both cases a Federal Government 
took the place previously occupied by a congress of 
independent States. The constitutional history of the 
Republic in the century which has succeeded has 
attracted many pens. A brief sketch of the Church's 
structural development becomes of interest. 

In the experiment then begun, the State had an infin- 
itely easier task than the Church. For a century and a 
half the States had been accustomed to self-government, 
to a large degree. Indeed, this was one of the political 
inheritances of the race. The town-meeting then, or 
even now, differs little from the folk-gatherings of the 
Germanic peoples two thousand years ago. In the 
political life the result of the Revolution did little more 
than transfer the rule from King and Parliament to 
President and Congress ; it did not seriously change 
the subordinate machinery of government in the States, 
counties, and towns. To adjust the new Federal Con- 
stitution to the old political life was, therefore, not a 
difficult task, once men's passions had subsided. 

In the Church, on the other hand, the new order of 



STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT. 265 

things was revolutionary to an extent hard to conceive. 

It broke at a single stroke the traditions which had 

controlled Episcopacy for more than a thou- 
Theexperi- L r J 

mentrevolu- sand years. The Church, nowhere more 

than in England, had been accustomed to 
associate Episcopacy with Monarchy. Churchmen them- 
selves were under the domination of this idea. For 
more than two centuries the conge cCelire of the king 
had been taken as authority in the choice of a bishop. 
Convocation had been silent for so many years that 
men had nearly forgotten its existence. Even when it 
did possess life it was not a popular body, deriving its 
authority from the people, but an agent whose powers, 
at the last analysis, were inherent in the State. In the 
long struggle between King and Parliament the people 
had gained the right, and ever since exercised the habit, 
of self-government in secular things ; but in the same 
struggle the Church had stood by the King, and, in 
consequence, remained bound by the ancient fetters. 
So long had this continued that Churchmen had not 
only lost the habit, but also the wish, for independent 
action. The familiar forms of procedure Avhereby the 
people registered their votes, and made known their will 
in political things, were not the wont of the Church. 

From government by bishops, themselves the creat- 
ures of the king, to government by a convention made 

up of popularly selected bishops, priests, and 
byconven- laymen, is a tremendous leap. When the 

convention is composed of men who had been 
born and reared and had their habits fixed under 
another ecclesiastical system, the wonder at its success 



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266 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

becomes still greater. It took long to disentangle this 
primitive Church revived from the traditions of the 
monarchical period. Reactionaries even yet dream of 
the time when Charles First was king. 

The immediate task before the newly federated 

Church was to adjust the mutual relations of bishops, 

clergy * and laitv. Each order had an inde- 

Relationof ° J . 

the three pendent voice m the management. How 
could they act harmoniously ? The introduc- 
tion of the laity into the place assigned to them was a 
momentous step. The ecclesiastical mind of New Eng- 
land was opposed to it entirely. Connecticut only came 
into the federal association upon the formal assurance 
that lay representation was but a 'privilege allowed to 
any State, which it might waive without suffering 
any diminution of its own strength in representation. 1 
They accepted it as a privilege of doubtful wisdom, but 
sent lay delegates in 1792. Even after a century has 
elapsed they still exclude laymen from the Standing 
Committee. Upon the whole, however, this most revo- 
lutionary of the changes introduced became soonest 
accepted and fixed in a well-defined function. 

There was far more confusion as to the rights and 
powers of bishops. In the colonial days the absence of 
The powers discipline was constantly deplored. It was 
of bishops, absent because no bishop was present. A 
simulacrum of it appeared in the person of the Bishop 

1 "The Church in each State shall be entitled to a representation of 
clergy or laity or both. In case the Church of any State should neglect 
or decline to appoint these deputies of either order, or if it should be 
their rule to appoint only out of one order, the Church in such State 
shall nevertheless be considered to be duly represented ... by either 
order." (Letter of Federal Convention to Bishop Seabury.) 






STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT. 2C7 

of London's Commissary ; but what power he pos- 
sessed was recognized to be but delegated by his 
principal, in whom it inhered. Now that a bishop was 
on the ground, what rights and powers are his ? How 
far may they be modified or restrained in action by the 
co-ordinate powers of clergy and laity in convention ? 
In one form or other, this question has been before the 
American Church for a century. The general drift has 
been toward that undue limitation of their inherent 
powers which Bishop Seabury feared. Their unquali- 
fied power of " visitation " was at first conceded. 1 It 
was not only their right but their duty to make inquisi- 
tion of the working of every minister in his cure ; " to 
examine the state of his church and inspect the behav- 
ior of the clergy." The minister and church-wardens 
are charged to give their bishop the information he 
asks. 2 The Diocesan Convention has long since as- 
sumed this power. It is to it that such reports are now 
"Visita- made, for information only, and not as a 
tion." possible ground of discipline. The bishop's 

power of initiation in the exercise of clerical discipline, 
the power which by right and immemorial custom has 
always inhered in his office, has been almost, if not 
entirely, taken from him and lodged elsewhere. 3 The 
party offending is not now to be summoned by the bishop 
to give an account, but presented for trial, if any of his 
brethren volunteer this service, before a court from which 
the bishop is for the most part excluded. 4 In the matter 

i Canon iii. 1789. 

2 Canon xi. 1789. 

3 Gen. Con. Canons, Title II. 

4 Diocese of Pennsylvania. Canon xvii. 



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268 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

of ordination, the distinguishing function of the Epis- 
copate, the same gradual process of restriction has oc- 
curred. The duty to select fit persons, and to pass upon 
their qualifications for the ministry, has always, by 
ancient usage, been lodged in the hands of the bishop 
in his capacity of chief pastor. Before the federation, 
Bishop Seabury exercised this power without question. 1 
It was the same authority which had warranted the 
English bishops in ordaining him and the hundreds of 
others who had crossed the sea for that end in colonial 
times. There the bishop had not been hindered in his 
right to beget spiritual children. The convention at 
once set limits to episcopal discretion here. It pre- 
cluded the bishop from laying hands on any man, unless 
he had reached a certain age, and had a field of work 
guaranteed ; but this was only putting an old custom 
into the form of a law. Within these limits 

Encroach- 
ment by it left the bishop free to act. It provided 

ing Com- f° r mm an agent in the Standing Committee 
whose duty it would be to examine for him 
the candidates' fitness, but recognized his original 
power by the provision that " every candidate for 
Holy Orders shall be recommended according to . . . 
the requisites of the bishop to whom he applies." 2 But 
as time went on, the Standing Committee ceased to act 
as the bishop's agent, 3 and came to be regarded as hav- 
ing an independent authority of its own in the premises. 
Then a still more radical departure from its original 



1 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, p. 213. 

2 Canon vi. 1789. 

8 It was first called the " Bishops' Council of Advice." 



STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT. 269 

function insensibly took place, and the Standing Com- 
mittee came to be thought of as representing the clergy 
and laity ! It is usually so regarded now. From being 
the bishop's creature, it has become the Diocesan Con- 
vention's representative. In this capacity a mixed body 
of clergymen and laymen now divides with the bishop 
the power of selecting fit persons for the ministry, and 
leaves him the power to ordain only such persons as it 
may think worthy. 1 

While the power of bishops in their individual capac- 
ity has been steadily circumscribed, so that of the 
Power of House of Bishops has been extended. The 
Bishops in- ^ rs ^ P rov i s i° n was to gi ye them only a seat 
creased. ex officio among the other clergy. With this 
Bishop Seabury would in no wise be content. Then 
they were constituted a separate House with power to 
originate measures, but without an absolute negative 
upon the other House. The clergy and laity could 
pass any measure over their heads by a four-fifths vote, 
or through the bishops' failure to negative it within a 
limited period of two days. 2 Twenty years later both 
these restrictions upon independent action were re- 
moved, and the House of Bishops received the power 
which has often stood the Church in good stead. 3 

1 Gen. Con. Canons, Title I. Canons 1-8. 

Among the "Fundamental Rights and Liberties : ' laid down in the 
Convention of 1783, as the basis of federation, is the following: "The 
clergy shall he deemed adequate judges of the ministerial commission 
and authority, and of the literary, moral, and religious qualifications and 
abilities of persons to be nominated to the different orders of the minis- 
try; but the approving and receiving such persons to any particular cure, 
duty, or parish, when so nominated, set apart, consecrated, and ordained, 
is in the people who are to support them, and to have the benefit of their 
ministry." White: Memoirs, p. D4- 

2 Constitution, 1789. 

3 Oo„. fVTV .Tn-"-„«l. 1808. 






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270 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

This same tendency toward legal rather than personal 
authority shows itself also in the provision for the godly 
Discipline of discipline of the laity. Virginia objected to 
the laity. ^ e « Proposed Book " because it gave to 
the priest the power to repel unworthy persons from the 
Holy Communion. The sense of the united Church 
was so much the other way, however, that it not only 
allowed this power to the priests, but extended the lati- 
tude within which the book restricted it. The English 
rubric required the priest in such a cause to report the 
case to the Ordinary within fourteen days at the 
farthest. The American only required him to do so 
as soon as conveniently may be. The English rule 
required the bishop to institute an inquiry into the 
facts of every such case as soon as reported to him. 
The American says he need not do so unless the 
repelled person asks for such a trial in writing, within 
a fixed term, after which his case shall go by default. 
In such a cause the bishop, the priest, and the person 
repelled were the only parties. The bishop was at 
liberty " to proceed according to such principles of law 
and equity " as he might, and his judgment was final. 
But, as the spirit of government by convention gained 
sway, the personal authority of both bishop and priest 
was circumscribed. The Convention provided for a 
regular process of trial for a repelled communicant, 
either by its own canons, or by such as the Diocesan 
Conventions might adopt. 1 Diocesan Conventions drew 
the restrictions still closer, and, in some cases, set up. 
mixed courts of clergy and laymen for such cases. 2 

i Canon xlii. 1832. 
' 2 Penna. Canon xviii. 



STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT. 271 

The whole legal history of the Church, in fact, is but a 
record of the successive assumptions of power by the 
General Convention. 

From the outset the Liturgy was taken under its con- 
trol. During the whole colonial period there had been 
Control of great laxity in the use of the Prayer-Book, 
the Liturgy. J3 u t f ew people possessed copies of it, and in 
public worship the " clerk " spoke for all the congrega- 
tion. Beside that, there had been no power present to 
enforce uniformity. But the practice of the two hun- 
dred years since the English Church had avowed her 
settled purpose to bring all her members into one uni- 
form mode of worship had produced its effect. The 
possibility of variety of use in the same National 
Church had ceased to be thought of. The Convention 
at once assumed unquestioned control in the matter, 
and set before itself uniformity as an end. In the 
early reports upon the " State of the Church," one item 
always records the extent to which this had been 
attained in each State. 1 The success was finally abso- 
Tende to lute. From Maine to California uniformity 
uniformity. was exa cted. When that had been achieved 
there came a reaction which threatened revolution. 
Ritual violations of law began to show themselves 
everywhere. They were quite as much rebellions 
against mechanical routine, as the outcome of strange 
doctrine. The next phase of the history is that long- 
drawn effort in which the Convention is now engaged, to 
stamp out the wide-spread insurrection against its law 
of ritual uniformity. Its sway in this regard was only 

1 General Con. Journal, 1820. 



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272 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

achieved by persistent effort through half a century ; a 
second half-century may see it overthrown or abdicated- 
Over Hymns as well as Prayers, the Convention 
stretched out its hand. It early assumed the power to 
say what might be sung, and what might 
not. At a later date it set forth tunes as 
well, and with the same right. Nor has the assumption 
been generally questioned. Its power to authorize 
certain selections from religious poetry has been re- 
garded as carrying with it the power to exclude all 
others. 

It has not hesitated to take cognizance of the per 
sonal actions of individual clergymen, and to ins true I 
them to keep away from one another's field of work, 
It has taken notice of the daily life of the laity, and 
prescribed rules for their personal conduct. 1 

The original Act of Association stipulated : " That 

no powers be delegated to a general ecclesias !ical gov- 

eminent, except such as cannot be conven- 

Powers of x 

General Con- iently exercised by the clergy and laity in 
their respective congregations." In a cent 
ury the same " general ecclesiastical government " ha.j 
gathered into its hands all authority. It would be dif- 
ficult to say what it might not legally do. In tho 
absence of any supreme ecclesiastical court to interpret 
the Constitution with authority, any local power to 
withstand its mandates, any authority to enforce the 

1 " All persons within this Church shall celebrate and keep the Lord's 
Day, commonly called Sunday, in hearing the Word of God read and 
taught, in private and public prayer, in other exercises of devotion, and 
in acts of charity, using all godly and sober conversation." Canon 

xlii. 1832. 



STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT. 273 

terms of the original compact, there would seem to be 
no limit set to the Convention's power except its own 
will. 1 

The parties to the original federation were the 
Churches in the several States. In the early years of 
stat8 the history these are uniformly thought and 

autonomy. spoken of as possessing independent lives. 
The old ideal of National Churches was always present 
to the minds of the founders, but their thought of 
nationality attached itself to the independent State 
rather than to the federated Union. In fact, that 
federation was not yet accomplished, and there was 
grave reason to doubt if ever it would be. Virginia or 
Connecticut were far more substantial realities than 
was the United States. This way of thinking survived 
until a generation grew up under the flag of the 
Federal Union. Then it was seen that while State 
lines might be convenient boundaries for ecclesiastical 
dioceses, there was no necessary relation between the two 
things. The quality of nationality could not be claimed 
for an individual State to the extent which would war- 
rant the inhabitants of it "acting as a National Church. 
This quality had insensibly transferred itself to the 
Federal Union. When this fact came to be recognized, 
there Avas no principle to hinder the division of a State 
into convenient dioceses, or the grouping of several 
States into one ecclesiastical district. 2 But when this 
was done, and New York had been divided, the accepted 



1 Dr. Francis Wharton, in Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 400. 

2 " Address to the Clergy and Laity of the P. E. Church residing in 
the Western Part of the State of New York," 1835, p. 20. 



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274 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

principle of representation at once became indefensible. 
State autonomy had disappeared. The idea of diocesan 
Gradually autonomy had not yet emerged. The States 
abandoned. i iac [ i iac i an equal representation in conven- 
tion allowed them, from the first. But this was not 
from any idea of diocesan equality, but from the 
thought of each being a National Church. That prin- 
ciple being abandoned, an equal representation, regard- 
less of numbers or strength, became at once inequitable. 
But the method had become intrenched in custom, and 
acquired the authority of prescription, and so it sur- 
vived. It became only a question of time, however, 
as to when the Church should recognize the change in 
the fact, and bring her practice to conform thereto. 

The same lust of legislation which led the Convention 
to regulate prayer, praise, and conduct, led it also to 
enact by law a detailed system of doctrine. 

In the sixteenth century the Church of England 

had been coerced by the doctrinal spirit of the age to 

set forth a detailed body of divinitv in her 

The Articles, , . 

and their Thirty '-nine Articles. The action was foreign 

origin 

to her genius. But the Romanists had their 
Tridentine formularies ; the Lutherans their Augsburg 
Confession ; the Calvinists the Westminster Confession, 
and the Church of England was driven by the Zeitgeist 
to become tw like unto the nations." The adoption of 
such a detailed system of theology was contrary to her 
history and traditions. The Confession remained in 
her body like a foreign substance, irritating, until it 
became encysted and forgotten. When the American 
Church was organized it had a chance to rectify 



STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT. 275 

the error. A wish widely prevailed to omit the 
Articles altogether. Their importance was deemed 
so subsidiary that they were set aside until all else 
was settled. Then the question came up, Shall this 
Church formulate a body of doctrine ? Shall it exact 
subscription thereto? In 1799 the question was 
brought forward concerning the Articles. These had 
not been bound up with the Prayer-Books which had 
been used in America for more than a generation. 
They had been thought of as standing upon the same 
ground that the Homilies did, and were little, if at all, 
known by the people. 1 The Convention went into 
Committee of the Whole upon the subject. When it 
rose the chairman reported the following, which they 
had agreed upon: " Resolved, That the articles of our 
faith and religion as founded on the Holy Scriptures 
are sufficiently declared in our Creeds and our Liturgy 
as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer, established 
for the use of this Church, and that further articles do 
not appear necessary." 

Unfortunately, the House saw fit to vote against the 
resolution 2 which it had just agreed to in committee. 
The Bishops were in favor of adopting the Articles. 
Two years later, some political modifications having 
been made, they were adopted as a whole. They were 
Their bind- ordered to be bound up with the Prayer-Book 
ingforca. j n < iX \\ future editions. No formal subscrip- 
tion to them was prescribed. There they have stood 
since. What binding force upon belief they may 

1 Letter from a Churchman to His Friend in New Haven, 1808, p. 29. 

2 Con. Journal, June 14, 1799. 



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276 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

cany, each decides for himself. They are a section 
of sixteenth-century thought transferred to the nine- 
teenth. They have never exercised any appreciable 
influence upon the life or belief of this Church. Like 
all contemporary Confessions, they have largely ceased 
to be intelligible. They are a water-mark of a previous 
tide. The current of the Church has flowed on un- 
mindful of them. The last revision of the Prayer-Book 
provides for their being bound up next its cover ; the 
next will probably bind them outside. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 277 



CHAPTER VI. 

FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 

Between 1790 and the close of the War of 1812, a 
profound change occurred in America. It was the 
passage from colonial to modern life. The Revolution 
had made it necessary and cleared the way for it. The 
Federal Constitution had fixed the lines of its ultimate 
development. The Protestant Episcopal Church was 
equipped to keep step with it. But the mature men of 
1790 had been reared in a social, religious, and commer- 
cial environment as different from that into which their 
sons emerged when they took the management of affairs, 
as could well be imagined. The fathers, both in Church 
and State, had been wise builders. But they were as 
little at home in the house which they had erected as is 
the plain and successful man of business in the splen- 
did mansion which he builds for his children after he 
has made his fortune. The Revolutionary men were 
Change of to ° °^ to adjust themselves easily to the new 
manners. regime. That compelled the abandonment of 
old customs, and prejudices still more close-clinging 
than custom. Wigs were laid aside. The sword, here- 
tofore the badge of a gentleman, ceased to be carried. 
Distinctions of social rank were beginning to fade, to 
the great disturbance of them of the ancien rSgime. 



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278 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

The formal manners of the colonial period were passing 
away, and the sharp, business-like intercourse of mod- 
ern times was coming in. 1 The bishops and statesmen 
who were to the fore at the beginning of the period 
were men of the old school. Those whom we shall see 
at its end were modern men. The change from the old 
order to the new led through an unhappy and turbulent 
epoch. In its turmoils the men of clear vision, saga- 
cious mind, and strong hand, who had fought a battle 
Old men and a g ams t odds, cemented the State, founded a 
new times. Nation, and organized a Church, one by one 
dropped out of sight. It seemed as though the titanic 
task they had accomplished had drained their energies. 
One of the most brilliant epochs in the history of the 
American people is followed closely by one of the dark- 
est. The body politic and the body ecclesiastic seemed 
exhausted after the strain of the great effort for inde- 
pendence. Disorders of all sorts broke out in the 
depleted system. Virulent party strife racked it with 
pains. Federalist and anti-Federalist assailed each other 
with a rancor unknown in modern politics. No name 
was so great and no character so high as to bring its 
owner safety. Washington was called a " fool by 
nature," and Franklin a " fool by old age." Scurrilous 
pamphlets, abounding in personalities, pasquinades, and 
libellous newspaper articles were the least objectionable 
of the weapons used. 1 When, these were not violent 
enough, clubs and smallswords took their places. Both 
parties agreed in attacking what they thought the 

1 Johnson: History of the U.S., p. 167. 

1 M'Master: History of the U.S., vol. i. ch. 5. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 279 

shameful extravagance of Congressmen. States wran- 
gled about the ownership of the public lands, and while 
they argued, land-jobbers stole them. 1 Debate ran fierce 
and high about slavery. The smallpox devastated New 
A dark England, and the yellow-fever threatened to 

epoch. depopulate Philadelphia and New York. A 

shameful panic seized the people;' Ties of nature and 
of affection were disregarded, and each man thought 
only of himself. The horrid selfishness of fear demor- 
alized the populace. The Indians broke out against the 
-frontiersmen on the Ohio and the Maumee. Harmer 
and St. Clair were beaten by their savage enemies, and 
it looked as though the movement westward would be 
stayed at the Ohio. Algerine pirates seized upon the 
ships of the new nation and sold their crews into a 
hopeless slavery. Speculation ran rife. Even city 
councils took to gambling. Drunkenness threatened 
to debauch the nation. In the Western settlements 
whiskey was the only currency used. A tax on its 
manufacture raised an insurrection which it required 
the national resources to suppress. In 1810 there were 
fourteen thousand distilleries in the country, producing 
two and a half gallons of raw spirits annually for every 
person in the population, a rate never since reached. 2 
The subsiding animosity against England and all things 
English was fanned into a new flame by the terms of 
the British Treaty and the hateful Tory claims. 3 
" M'Fingal," a satire upon the Tories, after the manner 



1 Hawks: Ecclesiastical Contributions, vol. Va., Appendix, p. 81. 

2 Schouler: History of the U.S., vol. ii. 

3 lb., vol. i. pp. 456, 459. 






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280 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHUPCH. 

of "Hudibras," was in every hand and upon every 
tongue. 1 

It was the period dominated by French infidelity. 
The service rendered the Americans by Lafayette and 
French infi- nis compatriots during the war had won the 
deiity. people's heart. France seemed to promise a 

sister republic. Previous to the reaction caused by the 
atrocities of the French Revolution, French manners 
were all the rage. Talleyrand, the apostate Bishop of 
Autun, De Noailles, Rochefoucauld, Louis Philippe 
himself, were honored guests. The tri-colored cockade, 
was the favorite decoration. The shallow atheism 
which led the French to abolish God by decree was 
widespread here. Jefferson was its scarcely disguised 
apostle. Tom Paine became its champion. His "Age 
of Reason," published in 1794, had a circulation and 
an influence hardly equalled by any single book since. 2 
Its succinct, portable, and specious, even if shallow, 
arguments commended it to the thousands who were 
already under the influence of the same spirit from 
which it emanated, and were delighted to find argu- 
ments placed in their mouths. Especially in the South 
and West did this prevail. The clays of Christianity 
were thought to be numbered, and a reign of " Rea- 
son " was at hand. Like the Ingersollism of a later 
date, it was welcomed by the half educated, who 
wished the freedom from moral restraints which it 

1 Trumbull : " M'Fingal," now only remembered by its surviving 
couplet, — 

" No rogue e'er felt the halter draw, 
With good opinion of the law." 

2 Hildreth : History of the U.S., vol. ii. p. 4G4. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 281 

carried with it. When Jefferson was chosen President, 
it seemed to have triumphed utterly. Presidents have 
been elected since who have sat loosely to the Christian 
faith, but not before or since Jefferson avIio have been 
voted for on that ground. 1 

It was a period prolific of sects. Specially in the 
West and South a brood of them w as born. The sober 
Presbyterianism which the Scotch-Irish had lately car- 
ried into Tennessee and Kentucky was overwhelmed by 
the wave of revivalism which reached its height in this 
period. 2 Upon its ruins arose a growth of extravagant 
churches, so called, destined afterward to fill the valley 
of the Ohio. 

What could the newly organized Church do in such 
an age? The devastation of Avar, the fury of political 
Position of strife, the revived animosity to England and 
the Church. a j]_ things English, the craze of French infi- 
delity, the unsettling of fixed habits, the loosening 
of creeds, the weakening of reverence, all wrought 
against her growth. 

By the happy union of the New England and the 
Federal ideas in the ecclesiastical constitution, signed 
by all the States in 1789, the Church had escaped the 
peril of permanent schism, not to say of anarchy. 
Upon the death of poor Dr. Griffith, Virginia chose 
Dr. Madison, who w r ent to England for consecration, 
and thus completed the English line. Both lines com- 
bined in consecrating Dr. Claggett Bishop of Mary- 

1 Centennial Council, Va., p. 139. 

\ 1 Chase: Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 108. 

2 Roosevelt: Winning of the West, vol. i. p. 133. 
2 Hildreth: History of the U.S., vol. ii. p. 463. 



282 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

land. South Carolina, which had only entered the 
Federal Church on the condition that no bishop should 
be sent to her, came to a better mind three years 
later, and elected Dr. Robert Smith. Massachusetts, 
the Eastern Diocese, and New Jersey followed. To 
complete the organization was thenceforth an easy task. 
The real problem was how to set the enginery of the 
Church into efficient motion. For a brief period it 
seemed as though success would be immediate. Multi- 
tudes flocked to Confirmation. Bishop Seabury con- 
Numbers firmed two hundred and fifty at one time x 
confirmed. a ^ Stratford, and nearly twice as many at 
Waterbury. At Bishop Provoost's first Confirmation at 
Trinity Church, over three hundred presented them- 
selves. They included children of fourteen, and totter- 
ing old men and women, who went from the chancel 
to their pews muttering their Nunc Bimittis. Two 
venerable ladies were led up by their colored slaves, 
who stood humbly by until the rite was over. 2 Bishop 
Madison, at his first and only visitation to the tide-water 
section of his State, confirmed six hundred in five par- 
ishes. 3 But when the novelty of the rite, now for the 
first time made possible, had worn away, it became 
very generally neglected. Bishop White does not seem 
to have deemed Confirmation more essential for the 
people than he had deemed it for himself. He had 
never been confirmed at all. He rarely made visita- 
tions outside of Philadelphia and the towns close by. 4 

1 Beardsley: History of the Church in Connecticut, vol. i. p. 430. 

2 Norton: Life of Bishop Provoost, p. 132. 
8 Centennial Council, Va., p. 140. 

* Rev. Dr. J. H. Hopkins, in The Churchman, April 22, 1884. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 283 

He never crossed the mountains but once. The many 
Church people who had. made their homes in Western 
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Eastern Kentucky were 
entirely neglected. 1 A convocation of clergy assembled 
in 1801 at Washington, Pa., coming from these dis- 
siackad- tricts, wrote to Bishop White, asking that 
ministration, something might be done to organize the 
Church in the West, but, after waiting eighteen months 
for an answer, were told that nothing could be done. 
Bishop White does not give any account at all of his 
Episcopal work until 1809. During the twenty years 
which succeed, his visitations averaged only six par- 
ishes per annum. In the twelve parishes beyond the 
Alleghanies, Confirmation was never seen but once in 
his long Episcopate. Indeed he protests in set terms 
against " the supposition in the minds of many, that 
a bishop should always be engaged in visitations." 2 
He declares that it is contrary to the usage of dio- 
cesan bishops in all ages ; that a bishop's time is " as 
much due to his own family as are any of his services to 
the Church ; " that it is inconsistent with a learned Epis- 
copacy ; that it would be oppressive upon an aged and 
infirm bishop. The bishops were all rectors of parishes, 3 
and regarded the work of their Episcopal office but 
little, except in the single function of ordination. 
Bishop Madison, after his first visitation, paid no further 
attention to his diocese, but occupied himself entirely 

1 Rev. Dr. J. H. Hopkins, in The Churchman, April 22, 1884. 

2 White: Memoirs, p. 467. 

3 Virginia, from fear that the bishop might come to he considered dif- 
ferent from the other clergy, passed a canon compelling him to be rector 
of a parish. 

3 Hawks: Contributions, vol. Va., p. 214. 



284 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

with his duties as President of William and Mary Col- 
lege. 1 The first Bishop of South Carolina never con- 
firmed at all. 2 After his death, no successor was chosen 
for eleven years. Bishop Provoost resigned in 1801, 
and busied himself with making a neAV translation of 
Tasso, and the study of botany. 3 During this time he 
entirely neglected the services of the Church and the 
Holy Communion. 4 The convention of his diocese met 
irregularly. During three successive years it did not 
meet at all. 5 The coadjutor, Bishop Moore, proceeded in 
the same easy fashion, commending the Church, however, 
as Provoost did not, by his own gentle piety. In 1811 
he was stricken with paralysis. Dr. Hobart was there- 
upon chosen the third Bishop of New York, all three 
Troubles in °^ whom were living at the same time. The 
New York. situation caused great searchings of heart. 
The interest, however, did not revolve about the prob- 
lem of the Church's progress, but of her internal ar- 
rangement. We first catch a glimpse here of the party 
spirit destined later to convulse the Church, and see an 
exhibition of that pettiness which has always been her 
besetting sin. The " Low Churchmen " were bitterly 
opposed to Dr. Hobart's election. Bishop Provoost. to 
the general amazement, laid down his lexicons, closed 
his herbariums, and came out to head the opposition. 
He declared that his resignation ten years earlier had 
not been irrevocable. He proposed now to assume the 

1 Norton: Life of Bishop Provoost, p. 174. 

2 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 189, note. 

3 Sprague: Annals, vol. v. p. 244. 

4 Perry: History, vol. i. p. 190. 

5 Norton : Life of Bishop Provoost, p. 188. 



" ■I 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 285 

administration himself, and would not require the serv- 
ices of the bishop-elect. His contention was so pre- 
posterous that the House of Bishops would not hear of 
it, and even his own convention would not allow it. 
Dr. Hobart must be consecrated. But when the day 
fixed for the ceremony arrived, the deplorable weakness 
of the Church appeared. There were six bishops in the 
United States. Three were necessary to consecrate 
another. Bishop Provoost was broken in health, and 
his naturally infirm temper was weakened by the trans- 
action of which this ceremony formed the conclusion. 
It was very doubtful if he either could or would be 
present. Bishop Madison of Virginia was so indifferent 
to the whole affair that he did not think of leaving his 
college duties for such a purpose. Bishop Claggett of 
Maryland, was taken ill on his way North, and obliged 
to turn back. Only Bishops White of Pennsylvania 
and Jarvis of Connecticut were available. It looked as 
though another journey must be made to England for 
consecration. That would indeed have been easier than 
to secure the attendance of three American bishops at 
one time and place. Finally Bishop Provoost consented 
to join in the consecration if his health would allow him 
to go to the church. The other bishops then agreed 
that if he should be unable, the service might be held 
in his bed-chamber. Fortunately he found the strength 
and the will to attend at Trinity Church. But upon 
The question ms arrival a great difficulty arose. He had 
of wigs. adorned his head with a wig, and the other 

bishops wore only their hair. It was solemnly dis- 
cussed whether or not so important a function could be 



I 



286 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

performed wigless. 1 Dr. Duche offered to lend Bishop 
White his for the occasion. But Bishop Jarvis, in that 
case, would be singular. Bishop White adduced the 
high example of Archbishop Tillotson, whose portrait 
shows him wigless. This illustrious precedent was 
deemed satisfactory for the two, while Bishop Provoost 
should uphold ancient usage in his Episcopal headdress. 
The question being settled, the services proceeded, 
and the three surviving men of the old order laid 
their hands upon Bishop Hobart, the first of modern 
Churchmen 

Throughout the South and the frontier the condition 

of things was no better. Between Virginia and South 

Carolina lav a broad belt of settlements 

State of . J 

things in the where parishes had once been, and where 

many Church families were scattered yet. 
Among the population which was pouring over the 
Cumberland Mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee 
there were hundreds of Episcopalians from Maryland 
and Virginia. These were all as sheep without a shep- 
herd, and were, for the most part, lost finally to the 
Church. 2 In the two old States where the Church had 
been established, destruction was abroad. The loss of 
the State support, upon which they had become accus- 
tomed to lean, left them broken in fortune and in spirit. 
In Maryland, party strife added the last touch to the 
dark picture. When Bishop Claggett grew infirm, and 
Dr. Kemp was chosen for his assistant, a secession took 
place, under the lead of Rev. Daniel Dashiell, of Balti- 

J Norton: Life of Bishop Provoost, p. 176. 
2 Id. : Life of Bishop Claggett. p. 110. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 287 

more, and an " Evangelical Episcopal Church " set up. 1 
The abortive schism never effected more than to harass 
the already wearied Church. The dawn of a better day 
was even then visible. 

But it was in old Virginia where the gloom was 
deepest. The Church had been in control there for two 
Low estate centuries, until within a generation. But 
in Virginia. ^^ generation had turned away from her in 
indifference or in anger. During the war, her laymen, 
the Washingtons, Henrys,- Lees, Pendletons, had taken 
the patriotic side, while the clergy had clung to Eng- 
land and to their glebes. When the new order of 
things came in, the Church's power was foredoomed. 
In the judgment of the people it had been misused, and 
they meant to take it away entirely. The laymen stood 
by impassive, or joined in the spoliation. In 1802 the 
blow fell, and the Church's property was swept away at 
a stroke. Glebes and churches were sold for a song. 2 
The proceeds, which, it had been enacted by the Legis- 
lature, should be " used for any public purpose not 
religious," were embezzled by the sheriff's officers. 
Guzzling planters toped from stolen chalices and passed 
the cheese about in patens. A marble font became a 
horse-trough. Communion plate, the gift of the good 
Queen Anne, adorned the sideboards of officers of State 
and country gentlemen. The clergy in large numbers 
laid down their spiritual callings. At the outbreak of 
1-he war they had numbered ninety. At its close, only 

1 Hawks: Contributions, vol. Md., p. 422. 

2 lb., vol. Va., p. 224 et seq. 

2 Centennial Council, Virginia, p. 70. 



) 



288 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

twenty-eight could be counted. After the spoliation 
they lost all heart. No convention was held from 1806 
to 1812. Then only thirteen could be assembled. When 
they adjourned it was with no expectation of ever meet- 
ing again. 1 " They fear," said the House of Deputies to 
the Bishop, "the Church in Virginia is so depressed that 
there is danger of her utter ruin." The people had 
already gone from her. The Rev. Devereux Jarratt 
declares that before the Revolution he had often nine 
hundred or a thousand communicants ; now, since the 
Methodists have done their work, he can scarcely find 
forty hearers. 

When William Meade was ordained deacon at Wil- 
liamsburg, in 1811, two ladies and fifteen gentlemen, 
Meade or- most of them his relatives, formed the con- 
dained. gregation. The citizens were filling their 

ice-houses, and the students, with their dogs and guns, 
had gone hunting. The church was dilapidated and 
the windows broken. There were grave suspicions that 
the Bishop himself had renounced the Christian faith. 2 
The literary society of the college had lately discussed : 
First, Whether there be a God? Secondly, Whether 
the Christian religion had been injurious or beneficial 
to mankind? Infidelity was then rife in the State, and 
the College of William and Mary was regarded as the 
hotbed of French politics and religion. u I can truly 
say," says Bishop Meade, " that then, and for some 
years after, in every educated young man whom I met, 
I expected to find a sceptic, if not an unbeliever." No 

1 Centennial Council, Virginia, p. 143. 

2 Meade: Old Churches, vol. i. pp. 29-30. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 289 

minister had been ordained for years save one unworthy 
fellow, and it was a passing wonder to the people that a 
young man of good family, an educated man, a gradu- 
ate of Princeton, should enter the ministry of the 
Episcopal Church ! * 

In Connecticut, indeed throughout New England, the 
Church maintained its own, but made scant progress. 
Bishop Seabury took his office seriously. He 
in New was strong in the thing, but lacked grace in 

the manner. " I, Samuel, by Divine permis- 
sion Bishop of Connecticut, . . . issue this injunction, 
hereby authorizing and requiring you, and every one of 
you, the Presbyters and Deacons of the Church above 
mentioned, to make the following alterations in the 
Liturgy and Offices of the Church." 2 This was his 
style toward those who recognized his authority. In an 
"Address to Ministers and Congregations of the Pres- 
byterian and Independent persuasions in the United 
States of America," he charges them to return to the 

fold. This could only be done by " relin- 
Bishop Sea- . J J 

bury's quishing those errors which they, through 

prejudice, had imbibed." This sort of treacle 

catches few flies. On the other hand, his clear and 

emphatic presentation of the position of the Church had 

its effect upon a people who have always been moved 

by argument rather than by feeling. But even in New 

England a new hostility had arisen. The old charge of 

lack of spiritual earnestness had been revived. 3 A con- 

1 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 143. 

2 Beardsley : Life of Seabury, p. 386. 

3 Character and Principles of the Protestant Episcopal Church Vin- 
dicated: New Haven, 1816. 



) 

I 



, 



I 



290 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

certed attempt, in which the Puritan clergy joined, to 
damage her prospects and reputation, had been system- 
atically undertaken. 1 

It seems unfortunate that it should have fallen to the 
bishops of this period to meet and pass upon one of the 
Dr. Coke's most momentous questions which have ever 
proposition, been brought before that house. This was a 
proposition from Dr. Coke, the first of the Methodist 
superintendents. He had been set apart by Wesley in 
1784, and had himself commissioned Mr. Asbury in 
America to complete the organization of that numer- 
ous body, then members of the Episcopal Church. 
After some years of work and experience, Coke, still 
a clergyman of the Church, wrote to the new-made 
Bishops Seabury and White, offering a plan of reunion. 
He proposed that he and Mr. Asbury should be conse- 
crated " as bishops of the Methodist Society in the 
United States (or by any other title, if that be not 
proper), on the supposition of the union of the two 
churches, under proper mutual stipulation." Bishop 
Seabury never answered his letter at all. 2 Bishop White 
replied in his usual courteous style. Bishop Madison 
of Virginia, who knew better than any of the others 
who and what the Methodists were, and what their 
needs were, was anxious that the matter should be 
accomplished, but the other bishops were untouched. 
Bishop Seabury did not want it, and Bishop White did 
not believe it possible. 3 They dismissed the project 



1 Letter from a Churchman to his Friend in New Haven, 1808. 
' 2 Beardsley: Life of Seabury, p. 401. 
3 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 126. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 291 

with a general declaration that the Church was always 
desirous of unity, was ready to alter or modify anything 
save essentials to this end, and recommended to the sev- 
eral States to propose such conferences with Christians 
of other denominations as they might think most prudent. 
At first sight it would seem as though the Church 
had lost the opportunity of the century through the 
incapacity of the old bishops to comprehend 

JYi.6tilOQ.lStS 

gone beyond the new condition of things. Could they 
have foreseen the mighty ecclesiastical em- 
pire to which American Methodism was destined to 
grow, they would doubtless have laid aside all else, 
and striven to avert its final separation from its mother. 
The severance has been fruitful of evil to both mother 
and child. But it is doubtful if they could have suc- 
ceeded. It was even then too late. Had the Bishop 
of London hearkened to Wesley's earnest prayer a dozen 
years before, and ordained men to look after the thou- 
sands of Methodists who were then members of the 
Bishop's own flock, the division would probably have 
been averted. But he had refused, and the mischief 
was done. Wesley's action in sending out superintend- 
ents had been well and wisely done. It was the action 
of a High Churchman ! and an earnest man. There was 
no bishop here then, and, so far as men could see, no 
likelihood of any. Meanwhile " the hungry sheep looked 
up and were not fed/' That the superintendents should 
take upon themselves the office of bishop, whether they 
assumed its title or not, was inevitable. No chagrin of 
Wesley could change the course of events. He had, 

1 Stevens: History of Mtthodisrn, Appendix. 



292 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



with an honest purpose, built an engine which he could 

not control ; but the first American bishops were not the 

v men to either control or direct it. Their great work 

was done. It had been to organize American Episco- 
pacy. That they had done well and wisely. To bring 
it into right relation with the other component parts 
of American Christianity was to be the duty of their 
descendants a century later. 

As the chaotic period now before us draws to its end, 
signs of new vigor in the Church begin to appear. A 
Dawning of a generation of men born and reared under the 
better day. new orc | er are now coming upon the stage. 
The field is being prepared by a hundred unthought-of 
agencies. The unpopular war with England in 1812 
has ended, and a better understanding exists than did 
when it began. Churchmen had fought on the Ameri- 
can side, and had won their comrades' good-will. Napo- 
leon's duplicity has disgusted the people with the French 
influence. The Cumberland Road has been built from 
the Potomac to the Ohio and beyond. Canals have 
been opened up to carry emigrants and goods. The 
vast region east of the Mississippi has been purchased. 
Wayne has broken and scattered the Indians. Settlers' 
cabins have begun to dot the prairies. Lewis and Clark 
have toiled up the Missouri, and paddled clown the 
Columbia. Fulton's new steamboat has carried wonder- 
ing passengers up the Hudson, and its sister craft has 
been built on the Ohio. Manufactories have crossed 
the Alleghanies. The cotton gin has started new life 
in the South. A highway has been cast up. The old 
life has gone. The modern America has come. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 293 

With it have come new men. Bishop Hobart is im- 
pressing the true spirit of the American Church upon 
New men at New York and Connecticut. Meade is gath- 
work. ering up the scattered and broken forces in 

Virginia. Empie and Judd are laying foundations in 
North Carolina. The sagacious Parker is adjusting the 
Church to the new life in Massachusetts. The outlying 
provinces to the northward have been gathered into the 
Eastern Diocese, and Bishop Griswold is doing apos- 
tolic work there. That adventurous missionary and 
builder, Philander Chase, has organized a congregation 
at New Orleans, and has come home to prepare for his 
strange career in the Ohio valley. An Episcopal Acad- 
emy has been founded in Philadelphia, and another in 
Connecticut. The Virginia Churchmen are moving to 
establish a theological seminary. 1 The "Advancement 
Society " is beginning its work among the frontiersmen. 
A similar society in New York is sustaining a mission 
among the Oneidas and Mohawks. Bishop Hobart 
confirms eighty-nine Indians at one visitation, and 
ninety-seven at another. 2 His scheme for a theological 
seminary at New York is about to be realized through 
the generous gift of a layman, Jacob Sherred. Tract 
societies, Bible societies, Prayer-Book societies, have 
Representa- been founded, and a Church newspaper is 
tivemen. started. 3 Dr. Hobart puts forth his "Com- 
panion for the Altar," and defends Church order in the 
Albany Centinel against the Dutch Reformed Dr. Linn 



1 Centennial Council, Va., p. 79. 

2 Norton: Life of Bishop Hobart, pp. 56, 83. 

3 lb., p. 43. 



29-A THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

and the Presbyterian Samuel Miller. In his " Apology 
for Apostolic Order " he gained an honorable place for 

V the theory of Episcopacy in the controversial world. 

Churchmen were coming to the front in American liter- 

* ature, as they had a generation before in statesmanship, 

and as they were even now in law. Chief Justice Mar- 
shall and Chancellor Kent stood foremost in their pro- 
fession. Gulian C. Verplanck, Irving, Cooper, and 
Richard Henry Dana brought a new and broader life 
to American letters. 

The Bishops of the new regime make diligent and 
regular visitations. In some States an Episcopal Fund 
has been begun, and the Bishop is, in part at least, set 
free from the engrossing cares of a parish. The multi- 
farious machineries for parochial work are not yet 
thought of. The Sunday-school is seen in 

Beginning of ° . J m 

Sunday- the process of its evolution. As yet it is 
upon trial, and is more a secular than a relig- 
ious device. In an Anniversary Address in 1817, 1 
Bishop Hobart offers a lengthy defence of the plan to 
teach a modicum of Church doctrine, as distinguished 
from the " non-sectarian " instruction then in use. The 
report of the society before which he speaks shows that 
up to that time there had been published for the 
Sunday-schools in the city 8,000 alphabet cards ; 2,000 
spelling-books ; 740 primers ; 167 Prayer-books ; that 
several women over sixty had learned to spell quite 
well ; that twelve classes of colored children had 
learned to read in words of one syllable ; that, in the 
February before, Grace Church had started a school in 

1 Anniversary of the New Yor,k Sunday-school Society, 1818. 



FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW. 295 

which fourteen gentlemen had come forward as teach- 
ers, and they had opened with twenty scholars ; that 
the society hopes soon to issue 2,000 Scripture Lessons, 
being Bishop Gastrell's " Christian Institutes, a Com- 
pleat System of the Doctrines and Precepts of the 
Gospel, in a Connected Series of Scripture Texts ; " 
that they have collected eight hundred dollars, of which 
two hundred dollars has been paid as salaries to super- 
intendents, and for desks, while the balance is on hand ; 
that they venture to think the success for the year a 
convincing argument in favor of the new institution. 1 

The General Convention Journal for 1820 gives a 
comprehensive view of the state of the Church. It re- 
ports that in Maine, " where for many years 
State of the . . 

Church in it was depressed and almost extinct, it " has 

1820 

now assumed a flourishing aspect ; " that in 
New Hampshire there are nine churches ; in Massachu- 
setts it is flourishing, the Canons and Rubrics are gen- 
erally observed, a large and elegant new church is 
nearly completed in Boston, and " a few small congre- 
gations have been collected in other towns ; " in Ver- 
mont three new churches have been built, some new 
congregations have been gathered, and a suit has been 
entered to secure the demesnes ; the Church in Rhode 
Island is flourishing, and " there is a decided and in- 
creasing attachment to the peculiarities of our Com- 
munion ; " " in Connecticut no material change has 
taken place ; " in New York the growth has been phe- 
nomenal, — twenty -four priests ordained and fourteen 
deacons, and thirty-six clergy have undertaken work in 

1 New York Sunday-school Society, Report for 1818. 



/ 



I 



296 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

the State within the last three years ; in New Jersey the 
" Church continues slowly to improve," eight Con- 
firmations have been held in the last three years ; in 
Pennsylvania it "is increasing as rapidly -as, when all 
circumstances are considered, we have any reason to 
expect;" in Delaware "the state of affairs is certainly 
improving ; " in Maryland is every sign of a new life, 
and it is recorded as noteworthy that the Bishop has 
visited nearly every church within the last three years ; 
in Virginia the improvement has been greater still, 
there are now fifty clergy, and " the conduct of the 
communicants is more consistent ; " in North Carolina 
the communicants have grown from fifty to more than 
three hundred ; in South Carolina there are signs of a 
new life ; from the remote region of Ohio little informa- 
tion has come, but several congregations are known to 
have been gathered, one at Dayton and one at Miami, 
at the least. 1 

i Gen. Con. Journal, 1820. 



WAITING FOR VOLUNTEERS. 297 



CHAPTER VII. 

WAITING FOR VOLUNTEERS. 

" The Report of the Committee on the State of the 
Church " for 1820 shows that it was then organized in 
all the original States. There were not yet bishops in 
all, but the scattered congregations in each had drawn 
together. In one instance, several separate States had 
confederated into a temporary diocese, with the expec- 
tation that some time the federation would be loosed 
by mutual action, and each independent unit of it 
would set up for itself. The idea of propagandism was 
but faintly, if at all, present in the mind of the Church. 
The State idea still controlled. 1 The functions of the 
national body were conceived to be discharged when it 
had provided and set forth the terms and conditions 

upon which any new State might come in. 
The National r J & 

Church in- When any should be ready it would volun- 
teer to come. Each was thought of as an in- 
dependent ecclesiastical empire. That had been the un- 
derlying principle of the original federation. The idea of 
the central organism going forth to plant new soil, culti- 
vate the tender shoots, and gather the harvest into the 
common garner, had hardly begun to be entertained. It 
was true that the Church's conscience had been dumbly 
uneasy in presence of the situation for a long time, but 

1 White : Memoirs, pp. 464-4(57. 



298 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

no way to correct it was evident. For more than a gen- 
eration there had been Chnrch families " over the mount- 
ains," ministered to fitfully by itinerant priests, and 

\w often crying out for succor. But with the theory which 

the Church had accepted about her own relation to the 

i States, she was impotent. 1 She must wait until the feeble 

folk in any political division should grow strong enough, 
draw together of their own motion, organize themselves 
into a State Church, choose a bishop, and ask for admis- 
sion. Meanwhile they must be left to themselves, not un- 
pitied, but unaided. The Rev. Joseph Doddridge, who 
itinerated in Western Pennsylvania and Virginia in 
1811, says 2 that large portions of that great region, 
Pioneer including Kentucky and Eastern Ohio, had 

Churchmen, been settled originally by Church people 
from Maryland, Carolina, and Virginia. When they 
crossed the mountains they left their Church be- 
hind them. In their old homes they had enjoyed its 
privileges, as they had those of sun and soil, without 
much thought or appreciation. But now that it was 
lacking, they missed it sadly. They could not fall in 
with the crude religionism which prevailed in the back- 
woods. Their children were either becoming indiffer- 
ent, or being carried away by the rude excitements of 
Methodism. The indefatigable " circuit-rider," with 
Wesley's tracts stuffing his saddle-bags, was riding 
from week's end to week's end under the shadow of the 
ancient forests, stopping at ever}^ clearing to leave a 
tract and a word of exhortation ; frequenting the " log- 

1 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 240. 

2 lb., p. 238. 



WAITING FOR VOLUNTEERS. 299 

rollings," " house-raisings," " huskings," and " scutch- 
ing-frolics," seeking a chance to preach; unmindful 
Methodists °^ neat or c0 ^' swollen rivers or gloomy 
andPresby- swamps, of ribald jests or coarse opposition, 

terians in 

the back- sustained by the fire of a glowing enthusiasm 
woods ' to " save souls from Hell-fire." 1 The Pres- 

byterians were building their log-churches and cabin 
schoolhouses, organizing Presbyteries, and fixing the 
religious life of the region for three generations to 
come. 2 The Churchman was left to one side, unheeded. 
The Methodist pronounced him destitute of " vital 
piety ; " the Presbyterian called him a superstitious 
moralist ; his own National Church left him to live or 
die as might be. The half-dozen clergy wandering 
through this widespread region of poverty and religious 
confusion met together and begged the Church to come 
and look after her children. Bat they begged in vain. 
Doddridge declares that he had no expectation of even 
being buried as a Churchman when he should die. He 
affirms, in a letter to Bishop Hobart in 1816, that if the 
Church had used her opportunity, there might then have 
been " four or five bishops in this country, surrounded 
by a numerous and respectable body of clergy, instead 
of having our very name connected with a fallen 
Church." 3 

These facts had been before the Church, and had dis- 
turbed its conscience and heart as early as 1792. Then 



1 Eggleston : The Circuit Rider. 

1 The Hoosier Schoolmaster. 

2 Smith: Old Redstone. 

2 lb. : History of Western Pennsylvania. 

3 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 26. 



800 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

the Convention had passed a resolution urging each 
parish to take an annual collection for the help of 
the Church people in the western country, 

\l thought of and had appointed the Bishop and Standing 

missions. Committee of Pennsylvania a committee to 

\ administer the fund, and to send missionaries when and 

where they might see fit. 1 So little came of it, and so 
little was expected to come of it, that Bishop White, in 
his resume of the Convention's acts, does not so much as 
allude to it. 2 Sixteen years later a committee of three 
bishops, three clergy, and three laymen was appointed 
to consider the situation, and granted the power to send 
a bishop into the new States and Territories, if they 
should think it advisable. 3 In 1811 the committee 
report that they had not been able to see their way to 
take any action. Bishop White suggests, in that con- 
nection, that if a bishop should be appointed in that 
region, he would hope to be relieved by him of the care 
of his own parishes which lay beyond the Alleghanies ! 
It would not be fair to say that this long neglect of 
the regions beyond the pale was wholly the result of 
indifference, or to say that nothing was done. Some- 
thing was effected, but at an infinite cost of time and 
opportunity. Even before the National Church became 
alive to its corporate responsibility, and before the 
notion of State autonomy was laid aside, three new 
States had been carved out of the national domain, and 
the churches within them had organized themselves 



1 Gen. Con. Journal, 1792. 

2 White : Memoirs, Convention of 1792. 

3 Gen. Con. Journal, 1808. 



WAITING FOR VOLUNTEERS. 301 

and come into the federation. These were Ohio, Ken- 
tucky, and Tennessee. The missionary history of these 
is to be found by following the lives of two remarkable 
men. 

Two streams of emigration flowed westward. The 
first, from the meagre soil of New England, followed 

its own belt of latitude and settled in the 

Two streams 

ofemigra- basin of Lake Erie, and upon the interlacing 
tributaries of the Cuyahoga, the Muskingum, 
and the Maumee. New York reabsorbed her own emi- 
grants within the Mohawk valley and her own broad 
lacustrine domain. The second and fuller tide flowed 
from the old Middle colonies into the Ohio valley 
proper, and southwestward toward the Gulf. The first 
of these carried Philander Chase ; the second, James 
Harvey Otey. 

Chase was of pure New England, Puritan stock, born 
on the bank of the upper Connecticut, reared hardly in 
Bishop a Vermont farmhouse, and graduated at Dart- 

Chase, mouth College. 1 When in college in 1794, 

he, like Dr. Cutler had done at Yale, seventy years ear- 
lier, found, by chance, a Prayer-Book. 2 His study of 
it brought him to the Church. The young convert 
went home, upon his graduation, and convinced his 
father's house. He was ordained, and became at once 
the indomitable, eager, restless missionary and front- 
iersman which he remained until his life's end. Prob- 
ably no man in the American Church has laid so many 
foundations. He tried his 'prentice hand in the new 

1 Bishop Chase: Reminiscences, second edition, vol. i. p. 7. 

2 lb., vol. i. p. 16. 



\ 



302 THE PROTEST ANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

settlement on Lake George, and organized a parish 
there. 1 Among the stumps and cabins at Utica he laid 
down another ; another in the presence of the wonder- 
ing Indians at Canandaigua ; another at Paris ; another 
at Auburn. But his restless spirit soon bore him farther 
afield. He returned down the Hudson, and sailed away 
in New t° the far-off mouth of the Mississippi. The 

Orleans. "Protestant Church" of New Orleans had 

already a loose organization. Chase drew its bands 
closer, persuaded it to come within the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church, and became its rector. 2 His tireless 
labor, and his excursions far and wide through the 
swamps and bayous to the outlying settlements, brought 
him to death's door with a fever, from which he was 
recovered by a plentiful exhibition of "fixed air." 3 
When he brought his shattered body North, he was con- 
tent to be a parish priest at Hartford only until, with 
returning strength, returned his " Western fever." In 
1817 he started for the distant " Western Reserve." 
In midwinter, on horseback, and in a shackly pung, he 
crossed Connecticut and New York, bidding God-speed 
to the churches he had gathered years before, 

Pioneer mis- ° J 

sionaryin stopped to rest at the half-dozen cabins of 
Buffalo, intrusted himself and his horse upon 
the ice of Lake Erie, was near being drowned more than 
once by the ice breaking through, and found his jour- 
ney's end at Salem, Ohio. 4 " There was not an Episco- 
palian in the place." Nothing daunted, when Sunday 

1 Bishop Chase: Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 28. 

2 lb., vol i. p. 54. 

3 lb., vol. i. p. 98. 

4 lb., vol. i, p. 127. 



WAITING FOR VOLUNTEERS. 303 

came, he announced who he was and why he had come, 
gathered the people together, read prayers, telling the 
people how and when to respond, and delivered his 
message. The people "were much pleased with the 
prayers." There were already two clergy in the State, 
remote from him and from each other. For a year he 
went about from hamlet to hamlet, from clearing to 
clearing, gathered the Church people of whom he 
heard from time to time, established new posts, put him- 
self in communication with the other missionaries, and 
in 1818, five clergy, constituting the whole force in the 
State, together with half a dozen laymen, met, organized 
a diocese, and elected Chase bishop. He was conse- 
crated in Philadelphia, February 11, 1819. Then he 
plodded back on horseback, nearly freezing by the way, 
through York, McConnellsburg, Greensburg, and Pitts- 
burg to Ohio, and began his life's work as bishop and 
backwoodsman. The frontiersmen were either indiffer- 
ent or hostile to the Church. Indeed, Episcopalians 
formed a small proportion of the emigrants to the West. 
In the previous history of the country, the Church, as 
has been seen, had its strength mainly among the 
wealthy, official, aristocratic classes. These did not go 
West. It was the farmers, yeomanry, and mechanics 
who sought better fortune beyond the mountains. 
These were, for the most part, ignorant of the Church's 
ways and spirit. Few men have ever known so well as 
The frontier Bishop Chase how to win them. Once when 
bishop. } ie h ac [ appointed a service at a certain time at 

a distant place, he found, upon his arrival, that the hos- 
tile denominations had intentionally fixed a " Union Pro- 



304 THE PKOTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

tracted Meeting," at the same time and place. When 
he came in it was in full blast. Fortunately he found 
v on the outskirts of the crowd a Presbyterian gentleman, 

who did not at all approve of the tactics which his 
minister had used in fixing this meeting. By him the 
Bishop sent, courteously asking the Presbyterian, Con- 
gregational, and Methodist ministers present to come to 
him. When they came, sullen and pugnacious, he said, 
" I have come here by appointment to hold a service ; I 
beg you will join with me in conducting it and making 
it profitable." Without waiting for a reply, he marched 
to the platform, with them at his heels, and announced: 
" Neighbors, I hold in one hand a Bible, in the other a 
Prayer-Book. The one teaches us how to live, the 
other how to pray. I know you are familiar with the 
one, I doubt if you are with the other. I have brought 
some dozens of copies with me. With the aid of these, 
my good brethren, I will try to lead you in the service. 
If any of you, through the depravity of the natural 
heart, are averse to being ' taught how to pray,' you 
need the teaching all the more on that very account. 
Without confession there is, as you know, no remission 
of sins. We will therefore confess our sins to Almighty 
God, all in the same voice. You will observe that no 
man can say ' Our Father ' until he has confessed his 
faults ; we will now say i Our Father who art in 
heaven.' The proper attitude when we pray is upon 
our knees, as did Solomon, Daniel, Stephen, and Paul. 
After their example, I enjoin upon you all to fall upon 
your knees." And so the service proceeded, " the 
response from the great congregation being as the voice 
of many waters." 



WAITING FOR VOLUNTEERS. 305 

Did any good result from it? He "hopes so indeed; 
but much of the good was lost for want of shepherds to 
gather in the lambs." 1 As a man who knew his people, 
lived and loved their life, he travelled hither and thither, 
and laid the foundation of the Church in Ohio. The 
Kenyon monument to his name is Kenyon College. 

College. He saw very early that the Church, to be suc- 

cessful among the people, must be home-bred. There 
was no place or way to train up a ministry ; he would 
make one. When his plan was mature, he took the 
unheard-of step of going to England for the money 
needed. No such bishop had been seen there for a 
thousand years. His rugged simplicity awoke atten- 
tion, and he became the rage. With the friendship of 
great men and noble ladies, with his pockets full of 
money, he came home and planted his seminary and 
college. 2 He built his brain and heart in it. But with 
its growth and success came a conflict between himself 
and his subordinates as to its management. Finally, 
after what seemed to him an unworthy and ungrateful 
thwarting of his wishes in the matter, he turned his 
back upon the noble institution which stood in the 
broad demesne that he had wrested from the wilderness, 
mounted his horse, and rode away into the backwoods of 
Michigan. His real work was among the primitive 
frontiersmen. But in Kenyon College and Jubilee 
College he laid foundations upon which other men 
ought long ago to have built strong towers for educa- 
tion and the Church. They were earliest on the ground. 

1 Reminiscences, vol. ii.p. 201. 

2 Perry : History, vol. ii. p. 170. 



306 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

They possessed the good-will and respect of the people 
among whom they were planted. Bnt they have been 
overshadowed long since by the institutions of other 

\| faiths. Bishop Chase had done his work. Through 

him the Church in Ohio had been gathered, and re- 

1 ceived, not without questioning and hesitation, into the 

Federation which waited yet for such State Churches 
as might volunteer to come. 

Kentucky had already come. Among its very earliest 
settlers had been a clergyman of the Church. The first 
Church in to enter its borders had been Episcopalians 
Kentucky. from Virginia. But they were early overrun 
by the stream of Scotch-Irish which poured over the 
Blue Ridge after the Revolution. These carried with 
them the antipathy to the Church which their fathers 
had brought across the ocean with them. It had not 
been lessened by the Revolution and the Indian wars. 
The " Episcopal Church " was linked in their minds 
with Tories, and with the British officers whom some of 
them had seen among the Indians when, in their own 
early life, they had been carried as prisoners to Detroit. 
They had learned their letters from a primer on the 
title-page of which was a cut of John Rogers at the 
stake, surrounded by his wife and children. The pict- 
ure, with its moral, was as deeply fixed in their preju- 
dices as was the alphabet in their memories. 1 The 
memory of the early missionary, murdered by the 
Indians, had faded out of the land. 2 But in 1794, a 
prominent Presbyterian minister, the first president of 

1 Roosevelt: Winning of the West, vol. i. p. 309. 

2 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 198. 



WAITING FOR VOLUNTEERS. 307 

Transylvania University, had come into the Church, 
been ordained, and ministered to the scattered people. 
A few years later a popular Methodist preacher had 
followed his example. But in the main the country 
was given over to the revivalism which came in during 
the last years of the " Great Awakening." 1 From time 
to time, at long intervals, adventurous clergy found 
their way among the uncouth backwoodsmen. In the 
larger towns a permanent lodgement was slowly effected* 
In 1829 the clergy of the region and lay representa- 
tives from Lexington, Louisville, and Danville met and 
organized the Church in Kentucky. Three parishes, 
with four ministers, composed its strength. They 
elected Benjamin Bos worth Smith to be their bishop, 
and another State was admitted to the federation. 

James Harvey Otey was a gaunt, raw-boned, six-foot- 
three son of a Virginia farmer, the grandson of a Revo- 
lutionary soldier, born under the shadow of 

Bishop Otey. 

the Peaks of Otter. When he had graduated 
at the u University of North Carolina " he intrusted his 
life and fortune to the stream which was bearing the 
enterprise and vigor of his day to the West and South. 
The wares at his disposal were such as he had accumu- 
lated while at college. He moved to Franklin, Tenn., 
and became the pioneer school-teacher. 2 When thus 
employed he came in contact with one of the few pass- 
ing priests, and was baptized. He went to North Caro- 
lina, and was ordained by Bishop Ravenscroft, the man 



1 Tracy: The Great Awakening. 

1 Roosevelt: vol. i. p. 309. 

2 Green : Life of Bishop Otey, p. 7. 



308 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

he loved above all others. When he returned to his 
school there was no Episcopal congregation in the State, 
and no other clergyman of his Church within two 
hundred miles of him. 1 His office was despised by the 
people among whom he lived, and his Church was held 
in contempt. 2 Curiosity drew the people to " hear the 
Episcopal minister pray, and his wife jaw back at him " 
in the responses. 3 When they had come, however, 
Otey's splendid character and deep earnestness retained 
them. He was a man of the backwoodsmen's own sort. 
Once when he was asleep in a rude tavern, a local gambler 
waked him roughly and demanded his bed as his own. 
When the sleepy man demurred the gambler threatened 
to throw him out of the window. Then the sturdy 
priest thrust from under the cover a brawny arm, worthy 
of the Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst, and said : " Before 
you try to throw me out of the window, please feel 
that." 4 His stalwart Christian manliness and sweet 
devotion made him and his Church respected. He was 
tireless and successful in laboring for its growth. In 
1829, he, with two other clergymen, met in Nash- 
Church in ville, and organized the Protestant Episcopal 
Tennessee. Church of Tennessee. When their number 
grew to five, they chose Otey bishop, and a new State 
was admitted to the federal Church. The churches in 
Mississippi put themselves under Bishop Otey's care. 
Like Chase in Ohio, he dreamed of a theological 

1 Green : Life of Bishop Otey, p. 42. 

2 lb., p. 50: " I knew and felt at the time that I was looked upon with 
contempt, if not despised, by the great mass of the people." 

3 lb., p. 5(5. 
* lb., p. 84. 



WAITING FOR VOLUNTEERS. 309 

school. He was a teacher by instinct and habit. He 
labored for years to establish Christian education. He 
left his impress upon the public schools of his own 
State and Mississippi. He founded a school for girls, 
and another for boys. But his own dream did not 
come true for many a year, when it was realized in the 
University of the South. In the first five years of his 
Episcopate the clergy of his diocese increased from five 
to twenty-one. 1 But a whole generation had meanwhile 
been lost to the Church. 

To overtake the movement of population in the great 
West had already become well-nigh impossible. Unless 
the National Church should abandon its preconception of 
autonomous State Churches it never would be possible. 
As to the government of the churches already within the 
federation, the notion of State independence was already 
slowly disappearing. A movement toward centraliza- 
tion had long since set in unobserved. Powers were 
even now exercised by the General Convention without 
question, which had at first been assumed without ques- 
tion to belong to the States. The time had now come 
for the National Church to become a Propaganda. In 

1835 it abandoned its impotent attitude of 

Th9 new _ L 

departure waiting for churches to come, and resolved 
to move out and build them. The General 
Convention, in that year, formally declared that every 
baptized member was ipso facto a missionary ; consti- 
tuted a Board of Managers who should represent the 
whole people ; and provided for the sending missionary 
bishops in advance of any call for them. 

1 Green : Life of Bishop Otey, p. 42. 



I 



310 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

The action was revolutionary. Through it, Episco- 
pacy passed from the idea of a Federation of constituent 
State Churches to that of a National Church with com- 
ponent dioceses. It was not by accident that the ques- 
tion of the division of one of the original States into 
two or more dioceses arose at the same convention. 
Both actions sprang from the same source. The con- 
ception of the Church's structure had changed. 1 While 
the old theory obtained, its enthusiasm could not find 
expression. So long as it remained in the calm, 
cautious, constructive mood, that theory would suffice ; 
but if ever its heart should be deeply stirred, it would 
change its way of thinking. That access of zeal had 
already come, and the old bottles could not contain the 
new wine. 

1 White : Memoirs, p. 465. 



NEW SPIRITUAL FORCES. 311 



CHAPTER VIII. 

NEW SPIRITUAL FORCES. 

The preaching of the Evangelical leaders " awaked 
the Church of England from its philosophical pride 
and lethargy." 2 The sleep had been so profound that 
it had looked like death. The repulsive picture of 
English church and social life in the last century need 
not again be drawn. In America things had never been 
so bad. The decencies of life had always been main- 
tained here. But in the first years of the century the 
religious tone had been very low indeed. The Church 
Meagre spir- na ^ largely caught the spirit of the age. Those 
ituaiiife. w } 10 reorganized it were men whose religious 
habits had been fixed under the old conditions. A very 
few were men of marked devotion, but, as a rule, they 
were content with a very low spiritual life, and entirely 
indifferent to doctrine. 2 The clergy hardly took their 
office seriously, and the laity feared "enthusiasm" so 
much that they were content with less than earnestness. 
Virginia rejected the " Proposed Book " because its 
rubric gave the minister the power to repel an evil liver 
from the Holy Communion. Maryland chose Dr. Smith 
its bishop, well knowing his questionable habits ; and the 

1 Merivale: Four Lectures, London, 1879. 

1 Ryle: Christian Leadeis in the Eighteenth Century. 

2 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 188. 



312 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

General Convention, with the same knowledge, elected 
him its president. Bishop Provoost lived for years 
in neglect of the offices of the Church, and Bishop 
w Madison was currently believed to be an infidel. The 

ecclesiastical precision of Bishop Seabury and the Con- 
necticut clergy made them earnest to preserve the 
Church's purity in doctrine and discipline rather than 
the vigor of its life. A spiritual motive force was 
needed to carry the new Church into and through its 
Titanic task of ministering to the needs of a new nation. 
Such a force had begun to show itself in England in 
the darkest days of the last century, and was destined 
in the first quarter of the present one to dominate the 
American Church. 

The " Holy Club," which Wesley joined at Oxford, 
was only one of many similar groups of earnest-minded 
men who prayed for light in the midst of abounding 
gloom. The group to which Wesley belonged pursued 
its own course. He and his following started upon a 
path which led them outside the Church of England. 
But the great majority, his peers in zeal and wisdom, 
remained within. Wesley's path and theirs ran parallel 
a little way, but soon diverged. Methodists and Evan- 
gelicals had quite as many points of difference as of 
likeness. 1 They were different stocks from the same 
ThsEvan- root. The Evangelical fathers could not 
geiicais. march with Wesley. He turned from them 
with impatience when they refused to break away from 
the old order. 2 His methods were equally distasteful 

i Abbey ai:rt Overton: Church of England in the Eighteenth Cent- 
ury, vol. ii. p. 168. 
2 lb., vol. ii. p. 190. 



NEW SPIRITUAL FORCES. 313 

to them. The hypercritical Hervey and the learned, 
decorous Romaine were men of an altogether different 
type from Ingham, the Yorkshire evangelist, and As- 
bury, the itinerant revivalist. 1 It was Venn, the faith- 
ful parish priest and writer of the robust " Complete 
Duty of Man," Scott, the staid rector of Olney, Milner, 
the Church historian, Simeon, the missionary, and such 
as these who were the fathers of the Evangelicals. 
Their influence was dominant in the English Church 
when this century opened. They lifted its sodden body 
from the mire of the Georgian era, set its feet upon a 
rock, and established its goings. They had their pecul- 
iar cant, as all religious parties have, but. they secured an 
attention which other language would hardly have com- 
pelled. A mode of presenting Christianity which could 
compel the assent of human beings so far unlike as Dr. 
Johnson and Hannah More must needs be potent. 
The two salient features of the school were its con- 
Their differ _ ceptions of the personal Christian life, and of 
entiate. the function of the Church. As to the first 

of these, it laid emphasis upon Conversion. Like Roger 
Williams and Jonathan Edwards, like the Moravians and 
Wesley, it conceived the starting-point to be a con- 
scious experience. Their system had for its background 
the Augustinian dogma of total depravity. John New- 
ton, the converted slave-trader, was its type. The 
good priest Thomas Scott, already of saintly life, must 
needs be " converted " after years of a useful ministry. 2 

1 Tyerman: Oxford Methodists, p. 332. 

2 Seely: Later Evangelical Fathers, p. 1G0. 

2 Petitions were publicly offered in the " Prayer Meetings" of certain 
Philadelphia parishes for the "conversion" of Bishop White when he 
was already a patriarch ! 



) 



314 THE PROTEST AXT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

When Simeon gained a scholarship at King's College, 
Cambridge, and confronted the legal duty of receiving 
the Lord's Supper, he shrinks away in terror. He buys 
the old " Whole Duty of Man," and makes himself ill 
Conscious with reading, fasting, and praying. He 
experience. " sought to lay his sins on the sacred head of 
Jesus, and on the Wednesday began to have a hope of 
mercy ; on Thursday that hope increased ; on the Friday 
and Saturday it became more strong ; on the Sunday 
morning peace flowed in rich abundance into my soul." 1 
This is typical. Milner expands the individual expe- 
rience and traces it in his history of the Church. 
Heretofore, he contends, men have written the story of 
the Church as they would the annals of an empire. 
He will distinguish between the real and nominal 
Christians, leave the latter to one side, and trace the 
Church through the former. 2 

But the exploitation of the personal experience did 
not blind them to the use of the Church. Scott main- 
tained the weekly Communion at a time when it was 
generally neglected. 3 Simeon " had the sweetest access 
to God through my blessed Saviour at the Lord's table." 
But he brings his previous experience into the closest 
relation with it. When the priest gave him a piece left 
over of the consecrated bread, after the service, " I put 
it into my mouth, covered my face with my hand, 
and prayed. The clergyman, seeing it, smiled at me ; 
but I thought that if he had felt such a load taken off 

1 Seely: Later Evangelical Fathers, p. 238. 

2 Abbey and Overton: English Church in Eighteenth Century, vol. ii. 
p. 210. 

3 Seely: Later Evangelical Father;;, p. 1G8. 



NEW SPIRITUAL FORCES. 315 

his soul as I had, he would not deem my praises 

superfluous." 

The place assigned by them to personal experience, 

of course, gave the Evangelicals a peculiar relation to 

Christians outside their own or anv church. 
Their theory J 

of the Whoever was ready to testify to his own con- 

scious connection with Christ must needs be 
accepted as a brother. No one might go behind the 
man's own testimony, — unless, indeed, his life should 
grossly discredit it. This led them to relations with 
other churches, which induced those who claim for the 
Church an original jurisdiction in the religious life to 
distrust their purpose. Simeon, when he goes to Scot- 
land, has Presbyterians for his friends, and joins with 
them in the Sacrament without hesitation. 1 But he at 
once turns to his brethren in the Church and explains. 
He holds that an English clergyman may preach in the 
Established Church of Scotland, in which his king must 
worship, if there. Besides that, he declares with ear- 
nestness, that after every such experience he " returns 
to the use of the Liturgy perfectly astonished at the 
vast superiority of our own mode of worship." 2 The 
men of this school, both in England and America, were 
always emphatic in protesting their loyalty to the 
Church. They must be allowed to have known their 
Low own minds, and to have spoken sincerely. 

Churchmen. j> u t they did not always get themselves be- 
lieved. They gave their allegiance to the Church from 
use and wont, from conviction of her better ways and 

1 Seely: Later Evangelical Fathers, p. 265. 

2 lb., p. 264. 



316 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

methods. But it was with them an act of choice. In the 
background of their minds was always the feeling that 
they might innocently have chosen otherwise. The peo- 
ple, with that rough accuracy which belongs to popular 
judgment, called them low Churchmen. Their Church- 
manship was a matter of their own election, and not of 
obligation. 1 The high Churchman distrusted them, not 
because of their present conduct, but from fear of the 
latent mischief which might any day spring from their 
reservation of the possibility of choice. To his mind, 
it was not a region where a choice was allowable. 

In an age when the spiritual life of the Church was 
well-nigh extinct, only such men could revive it. They 
believed with all their souls in the awful doom which 
awaited every unconverted man. They believed that 
every man might be aroused and set to Avork out the 
tragedy of salvation in his own conscious life. This 
gave to the words of earnest men, as it needs must, a 
pathos and entreaty which told. Two generations later 
the Evangelical School, as such, had practically disap- 
peared. By that time the Church, which it had waked 
into life, had been taken by the hand by other leaders, 
and led in another direction. They looked after her 
sadly, for they loved her. They felt that she had been 
beguiled away from their safer guardianship. But the 
truth was that their decadence, when it came, 

Cause of 

their da- was not due so much to the triumph of a 
rival ecclesiasticism, as to the fact that a far 
deeper change had taken place in the mind of the relig- 
ious world. The Evangelicals had been Calvinists. 

1 Johns: Life of Bishop Meade, p. 140. 



NEW SPIRITUAL FORCES. 317 

When the people ceased to believe the Augustinian an- 
thropology, the motive to which they had appealed had 
gone. 1 Their preaching, which had so deeply stirred a 
generation which had believed itself to be " totally de- 
praved," failed to move a generation which had come 
into a truer way of thinking about itself. Salvation 
had come to be thought of less as a rescue from impend- 
ing doom, and more as an education in righteousness. 
The dread of future torment became less easy to awake. 
The " larger hope " embodied itself at first in a crude 
universalism. A soi-disant church sprang up with this 
belief for its foundation and title, and for a while grew 
strong. But what truth was in it diffused itself through 
the Christian world, and Universalism declined. A truer 
estimate of man's complex nature began to obtain. This 
fundamental change of view coincided in point of time 
with the fresh presentation of the Church as an author- 
itative teacher and guide. When this had come about, 
men turned away from the Evangelicals. In the first 
quarter of the century, they throve apace ; in the sec- 
ond, they encountered a rival too strong for them ; in 
the third, they began to decline. 

In 1835, the period at which the Church adjusted her 
machinery of propagandism, their vigor was at its best. 
The tracts and leaflets of Bishop Porteus, himself a 
Thomas Virginian, had been eagerly read by Vir- 

Scott. ginians. Thomas Scott, the rector of Aston 

Sanford, Bucks, to eke out his meagre salary, had writ- 
ten the famous Commentary from which so many mill- 
ions have received their theology. It had a circulation 

1 The Churchman: vol. v. p. 856. 



,! 



318 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

hardly paralleled in literary history. Before his death, 
in 1821, the English edition had reached twelve thou- 
sand copies, and the American more than twenty-five 
thousand. 1 The " Great Awakening " and the Method- 
ist movement had prepared the way for Evangelical 
work. Rev. Joseph Pilmore, once a Wesley an preacher, 
had taught it in Philadelphia. 2 Dr. Percy, one time a 
chaplain of Lady Huntingdon, had proclaimed it in 
Leaders in South Carolina. William Duke, a Method- 
America. i S £ w }!il e the Methodists remained in the 
Church, had preached it in Maryland. Bishop Griswold 
commended it by his deep piety in New England, out- 
side of Connecticut. But the great apostle was Bishop 
Meade of Virginia. It was the motive power of his 
own earnestly religious life. 3 For years, almost single- 
handed, he had labored, and successfully, to revive the 
old Virginia Church. Now he was the Evangelical 
champion in the National Church. The founding of 
the Virginia Seminary gave their distinctive doctrines a 
home. In Dr. Wilmer, its chief teacher, they found a fit 
and winning expositor. 4 Hopkins, Boyd, Bull, and Be- 
dell in Pennsylvania ; Milnor and Channing Moore in 
New York ; Mcllvaine in Brooklyn ; Tyng, Bristed, and 
Crocker in New England, all poured their evangelical 
fervor into the Church's life. 5 The striking success of 
Chase in Ohio, in spite of the sustained opposition of 
Bishop Hobart, had given it eclat. It was at its best in 
mind and heart. 

1 Abbey and Overton : Churcb of England in the Eighteenth Century, 
vol. ii. p. 206. 

2 Perry : History, vol. ii. p. 192. 

3 Johns : Life of Bisbop Meade, p. 255. (Dr. Sparrow's Sermon.) 

4 Memoirs of Dr. Tvng, p. 70. 

6 Perry : History, vol. ii. p. 193. 



NEW SPIRITUAL FORCES. 319 

But, meanwhile, a stream of renewed life had set in 
from another quarter. The hard and narrow Church- 
High-Church na&nship of the Tory school had been taken 
revival. U p ^y Bishop Hobart of New York and his 

followers. Their broader spirit and deeper devotion 
made it more humane. Bishop Seabury's task had been 
to stand out for the organizing principle of the Church. 
But his eye, from being so long and so persistently 
fixed upon a single point, had lost the power of looking 
afield. By the political circumstance in which he and 
his had been set, they had been isolated from contempo- 
rary life. Bishop Hobart was as uncompromising a 
Churchman as Seabury, but he was a man of his time. 
He brought the Episcopal Church into harmon}^ with 
the spirit of modern life. In the report upon the state 
of the Church for 1820, the State upon which he had 
left his impress shows more life and work than all the 
rest together. 1 One hundred and eighteen organized 
churches, twenty-four deacons, and fourteen priests 
ordained, fifteen hundred persons confirmed, a flourish- 
ing mission among the Oneida Indians, Bible societies, 
Prayer-Book societies, Sunday-school unions and the 
foundation for a theological seminary, show the pres- 
ence of a new force. Being set in charge of Connect- 
icut temporarily, he carried there, also, the same broad 
sympathy, tireless energy, ready adaptability, — the ele- 
ments which the Church of Bishop Seabury needed. 
His conception of the Church colored the stream of 
emigration wdrich flowed steadily westward following 
the latitude of his own State. 

i Gen. Con. Journal, 1820. 



320 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Away to the south, a man of more fiery zeal, but 
holding fast to the same idea of Episcopacy, 1 revived 
the work in North Carolina. Bishop Ravenscroft left 
his mark on the Church in the South and Southwest. 2 
Otey, the pioneer bishop of that great region, who had 
sat at his feet and loved him as a father, caught his 
spirit and passed it on to his own successor. 

There had now emerged in the Church two broadly 
distinguished types of thought and life. With the 
The two death of Bishop White, in 1836, the last sur- 

parties. vivor of the old " opportunist '' school passed 

away. The future now for a generation lay between 
Evangelicals and High Churchmen. The line of cleav- 
age did not run sharply through the mass. The two 
contrasted principles mingled in varying proportions 
in individuals. The same man might, and often did, 
embrace them both. He held to the conscious religious 
life with the Evangelical, and dreamed of ecclesiastical 
empire with the High Churchman. Indeed, in all the 
controversies of the period, each makes a point of assert- 
ing that he held to the principles of the other, — modified 
and corrected by his own. But two spirits strove within 
the Church. When action was necessary, party lines 
were drawn. When the High Churchmen took up the 
Sunday-school Union, the Evangelicals, disturbed at 
Bishop Hobart's Catechism, and scandalized by the muti- 
lation of Mrs. Sherwood's books, started an Evangelical 
Knowledge Society as an offset. 3 When this grew iiiflu- 

1 Norton: Life of Bishop Ravenscroft, p. 95. 

2 Johns : Life of Bishop Meade, p. 192. 

2 The Churchman, March 17, 1832. 

3 Johns: Life of Bishop Meade, p. 225. 



NEW SPIRITUAL FORCES. 321 

ential, the other side set up the Churchman's Library. 1 
They worked and planned together to organize the new 
machinery of missions : but when the Evangelicals 
began to suspect that they had been outmanoeuvred, 
they set up a rival volunteer society. 2 Their enthusi- 
Division of asm ^ m & already found a vent in foreign mis- 
labor, sions. Through their beloved Simeon and 
Henry Martyn, the religious world had been stirred with 
pitjr for heathenesse. This was the field into which 
the Evangelical could move far more readily than 
could the pronounced High Churchman. The purpose 
which he set before himself, to awaken individual souls 
and lead them one by one to establish relations with 
God, required little machinery. All that was needed 
was to find a godly man who should go and " tell them 
the story of the Cross." In 1822 a mission to Africa 
was determined upon, but no ship could be found to 
carry out Ephraim Bacon and his wife. In 1834 the 
Rev. Henry Lockwood sailed to China, where this 
Church has now twenty-two native clergy. With the 
single exception of the abortive attempt in Turkey, all 
the foreign mission enterprises were manned from the 
Virginia Seminary. 8 A tacit understanding had been 
reached that this should be the field of the Evangeli- 
cals, while the High Churchmen should exploit the 
home field. 4 There does not seem to have been any 
conscious strategy in this arrangement, but it acted 
directly in the interest of High Churchmanship, which 

i Johns : Life of Bishop Meade, p. 230. 
a lb., p. 200. 

3 ib., p . 197. 

4 Perry : History, vol. ii. p. 194. 



I 



322 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

for a long time steadily gained ground. While its 

opponents' energy was directed elsewhere, it moved 

northwest and southwest, crossed the Mis- 
Rising 
Churchman- sissippi, and has since been dominant. The 

s ip ' Low Churchmen's expectation that they 

should secure at least one of the two new missionary 

bishoprics was disappointed. 1 

The Church's forces moved out, under the new 

leaders, to win the mighty West. To trace in detail 

the steps by which they covered the prairies, 
theemigra- climbed the Rocky Mountains, and went 

with the gold-hunters to the Pacific, would 
require a volume. The roll of the missionaries' names 
would fill a book. The Church simply followed the 
emigrant, often lagging far behind him, but keeping 
him in sight while her strength would hold. out. When 
he had built his cabin, she sought him out in it. When 
the great cities sprang up in the wilderness, she entered 
into them and built her house. When the savage Ind- 
ian was restrained, and fixed to a permanent abode, 
she did her share to make him human and Christian. 
She met a various welcome for her proffered gifts. 
Peoples who knew neither her nor her fathers founded 
new communities, and she could not speak their speech 
or win their friendship. Other churches entered the 
new field beside her, before her, and behind her. She 
often failed where they succeeded. She often succeeded 
after their success had changed to failure. It may fairly 
be said of her that she has striven with an honest heart 

1 Johns: Life of Bishop Meade, p. 200. 
1 Meade: Old Churches, p. 379. 



NEW SPIRITUAL FORCES. 323 

to do her share in making and keeping the new America 
Christian. In the long, strenuous task, she has more 
and more sharply emphasized her churchly aspect. 

When Chase reached the new land of Ohio, in 1817, 
it seemed natural for him to begin his work at " Cove- 
nant Creek " by calling together his neigh- 
Two ideals. ' t> 
bors for the preaching of the Word, and the 

Prayers. When Breck and his companions laid down 
their packs under an elm-tree in Minnesota, in 1850, it 
seemed equally natural and fitting to them to "erect 
a rustic cross, build a rude altar of rough stones, and 
begin their work by the celebration of the Eucharistic 
Feast." 



821 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE. 

Between 1835 and the War of the Rebellion, the 
Church adjusted its manner of life to its changed con- 
ception of its constitution. When it had determined to 
send missionary bishops to the unappropriated West, it 
abandoned the attitude of a federation waiting for new 
units to propose themselves for membership. For the 
future it intended to act as a National Church. When 
it divided one of the old integers, and made a second 
diocese in New York, the old conception of State 
churches became no longer possible. 

" The change was fundamental. The analogy be- 
tween 4 States ' and ; dioceses ' was thereby broken 
down. Not only did the idea of diocesan sovereignty 
thus receive a serious shock, but in proportion to the 
weakening of the dioceses by subdivision was the power 
of the General Church increased." * The change was 
made, so far as can be seen, without a dissenting voice. 
It only recorded a change which had already occurred 
in people's way of thinking. The Church was becom- 
ing less an abstraction and more an entity. From many 
directions influences were converging to bring out this 
idea into distinct consciousness. The nation was be- 

1 Dr. Francis Wharton, in Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 401. 



THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE. 325 

coming consolidated, and the Church centralized. One 
of the capital powers originally reserved to the States 
was assumed by the General Church, without chal- 
lenge, when it provided for the trial and deposition of 
a diocesan bishop. 1 Possibly the grotesque result of 
a diocesan trial, just had, may have influenced this 
change. The Bishop of Kentucky had been presented 
Trial of under an accusation of falsehood. There 

bishops. were three charges against him, of one hun- 
dred and ninetjr-eight specifications. 2 The astounding 
verdict of the court chosen by the diocese had been: 
" Guilty; but without the least criminality!" 3 Under 
the changed law the Bishop of Pennsylvania was tried 
and suspended for drunkenness. His brother, the Bishop 
of New York, was tried and suspended for lasciviousness. 
The Bishop of New Jerse}^ was three times presented, 
and twice brought before a court, but without trial, 
upon charges affecting his integrity. All these trials, 
which at the time occupied the general attention, served 
to fix the popular mind upon the General Church, 
which was the party prosecuting. It came to be 
looked to as the sole source of authority in matters 
of discipline. It was but a step to thinking likewise of 
its authority in doctrine and life. The religion of 
Church people was unconsciously taking a deeper 
ecclesiastical tinge. The Church Avas becoming more 
sharply differentiated, not only from the world, but 
from the current forms of American Christianity. 

1 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 278. 

2 The Churchman, vol. vii. No. 38. 

3 " Sentence of the Court in the case of the Diocese of Kentucky vs. 
the R'.sljt Rev. B. B. Smith." 



326 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Prayer-Book societies were actively sustained in Penn« 
sylvania and New York. Their purpose was not solely 
v to teach men how to pray. A second purpose, which 

soon stepped up beside the primary one, was to propa- 
gate the Church. Tract societies which had this for 
their avowed object began to be popular. 1 " Nova An- 
glicana " wrote long articles against the Puritans. Dr. 
The Church Muhlenberg's broad, catholic spirit began to 
idea. make itself felt upon his pupils. The elder 

Bishop Doane and Dr. Croswell struck the same note 
in their hymns and sonnets that Keble did in his 
" Christian Year." 2 Professor Doane of Trinity Col- 
lege was the first to welcome Keble in America. He 
had anticipated his motive. Dr. Coxe soon carried the 
theme to its highest note and sweetest harmony, in his 
" Christian Ballads." Professor Whittingham at the 
General Seminary marshalled the facts of Church his- 
tory to the same end. Bishop Hopkins, the keenest of 
controversialists, wrote the " Primitive Creed " and the 
"Primitive Church." Dr. Francis L. Hawks gathered 
up the Church record of colonial times. Bishop Onder- 
donk carried on a pamphlet war with Presbyterians 
about the divine right of Episcopacy. 3 Books of sac- 
ramental devotion began to come in. Bishop Gris- 
wold's and Bishop Meade's Family Prayers continued 
to sell, but Bishop Hobart's " Companion for the 
Altar" outsold them both. 4 The great Temperance 
enthusiasm which was agitating the world, preaching 

1 The Churchman : vol. v. p. 835. 

2 Rev. Julius H. Ward, in Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 615. 
s The Churchman, vol. v. p. 81(5. 

4 lb., vol. v., advertisements, passim. 



THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE. 327 

total abstinence as a duty and denouncing the use of fer- 
mented wine at the Holy Communion, called public at- 
tention to the Church's different way of dealing with this 
and kindred subjects. 1 A new collection of Hymns, 
chiefly the selection 2 of Dr. Muhlenberg and Bishop 
Onderdonk, had now been long enough in use to infuse 
Increasing a more distinctive churchly sentiment among 
activity. the people. Church schools were springing 
up on every hand. Dr, Muhlenberg was fixing the 
type of them at Flushing Institute. Bristol College 
advertised that it was so full that no more students 
could be accommodated. 3 

Parish machinery for Church work was set up every- 
where, — female sewing societies, missionary societies, 
aid societies, benevolent societies, — until an English 
Church paper ridicules the movement by declaring 
that a church in Boston had started a " Ladies' Anti- 
young-man-standing-at-the-church-door Society." 4 The 
Bishop of New York issued a plea for free churches 
in the interest of church extension, and his plea was 
opposed from Philadelphia on the ground that not 
propagation but edification was the pressing need. 5 
The attention of the whole Church was kept fixed by 
the General Missionary Society upon the needs of the 
West. It cries out with shame that while the town of 
St. Louis is ready and anxious to have a minister, there 
is not one in the whole State of Missouri; 6 that there is 

1 The Churchman, vol. ii. p. 903. 

2 Ayres : Life of Dr. Muhlenberg, p. 84. 

3 The Churchman, vol. v. p. 835. 

4 lb., vol. v. p. 858. 

6 lb., vol. vi. pp. 1070, 1174. 
6 lb., vol. v. p. 898. 



328 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

but one in the State of Mississippi. It announces with 
enthusiasm that a strong parish has been organized in 
\ Mobile and another hopeful one in Memphis ; and that 

\fc the Rev. Mr. Salmon has just started from Western 

New York, with a little company of fifteen families, to 
found a Church colony in Texas. 1 

Four-legged Communion tables were going out, and 
solid oaken ones were coming in. In a few churches 
Change of stone altars began to appear. The black 
manners. academic gown began to give place to the 
white priestly robe as the dress of the officiating minis- 
ter. The surplice, which had been split down the 
front a century before, so that it might be put on with- 
out deranging the befioured wigs, was now sewed up 
again, and on its breast began to show some churchly 
emblem. Memorials began to come up to have its use 
made obligatory. 2 Bishop Hobart criticises the Vir- 
ginians for their neglect of ornaments, and Bishop 
Meade defends them. He urges that de minimis non 
curat lex ; that Bishop Hobart himself sometimes dis- 
pensed not only with his robes but with his gown as 
well ; that he had the high example of the Archbishop 
of Canterbury for ordaining deacons in their every-day 
dress ; and that Bishop Moore had never worn any 
uniform, save when performing distinctively episcopal 
acts. 3 Both the criticism and the defence show the 
drift. 

The emergence of the idea of corporate religion as dis- 
tinguished from individual salvation directed attention 

1 The Churchman: vol. vi. p. 1046. 

2 Johns: Life of Bishop Meade, p. 240. 
s lb., pp. 240, 241. 



THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE.. 329 

both to the ministry and to the machinery of the 
Church. Nor was this drift toward corporate action 
Corporate * n religion confined to the Episcopal Church, 
religion. j^ was m oving i n the Christian world. The 
Methodists were gathering their scattered forces into 
an ecclesiastical empire, 1 and lamenting the decadence 
of the personal enthusiasm which had marked the men 
of the previous generation. In 1832 a General Synod 
had taken up into itself the particular synods of the 
Reformed Church. 2 Ten years earlier the Reformed 
Presbyterians had organized their Presbyteries into a 
General Synod. 3 The question of constitutional right, 
which in 1837 split it asunder, was agitating the Presby- 
terian General Assembly. 4 The last step in the cen- 
tralization of the Roman Church was coming within the 
range of practical politics, in the dogma of Papal Infal- 
libility. The old churches of Sir Christopher Wren 
were being replaced by a higher ecclesiastical archi- 
tecture. The current of religious feeling was setting 
steadily away from the sharp individualism of Edwards 
and Whitefield and Wesley and the Great Awakening, 
and the Evangelicals, toward the thought of solidarity 
among those who are being saved. 

The set was already evident, when the " Oxford 
The "Oxford Movement" came. It changed the current 
Movement." i nto a fi 00 & m j ts e ff ect U p n Church life has 
been so enormous that it should be traced from its 
origin. 

1 Stevens: History of Methodism, pp. 520, 582. 

2 Manual of the Reformed Church in America, third edition, p. 73, 

3 Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia, p. 1908. 

4 Schaff-Herzog, p. 1<;08. 



330 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

In 1825 the Church of England was dominated by a 
devout but meagre Calvinism. Its political life was 
tossed and threatened by the wave of liberalism which 
had broken over France a generation earlier. Many 
sagacious men feared that forces Avere moving in society 
which were hostile to religion itself. They believed 
that the current mode of presenting Christianity could 
not prevail against them. They believed the Church to 
be in special danger. They had no confidence in its 
recognized champions. All sorts of Church "Reforms" 
were afloat. One proposed the abolition of church 
rates. Another offered to expel the bishops from Par- 
liament. Another proposed entire separation of Church 
and State. Another offered to unite all sects with the 
Church by act of Parliament, and give them the use of 
church buildings conjointly. 1 A Roman Catholic Re- 
lief Bill and a Reform Bill were pending. In 1833 ten 
Irish bishoprics were suppressed. The same year a 
little group of men met in the Common Room of Oriel 
College, Oxford, to form an " Association for vindicat- 
ing the Rights of the Church and restoring the Knowl- 
edge of Sound Principles." 2 

The company were bound together only by the bond 
of a common purpose. That was declared in the title 
Th° " Tract- °f the association. To reach their end each 

arians." man wag f ree £ wa ]k i n frig own road. 

Some gave their adhesion to the association after it was 
founded ; some never formally joined it at all. Their 
names have become known the world over : — Froude, 

1 Stephens: Life of Dean Hook, p. 106, et seq, 

2 lb., p. 107. 






THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE. 331 

Keble, Palmer, Rose, Pusey, and, greatest of all, New- 
man. Their object was to restore the Church's true 
doctrine. They held that, at present at least, emphasis 
was laid upon doubtful or untenable dogmas, while the 
abiding truths, the truths which belonged to the Church 
pre-eminently, had been allowed to fall into obscurity. 
These last were the ones, they maintained, about which 
must be fought the battle against infidelity. They set 
about to re-state them, in a series of " Tracts for the 
Times." What the doctrines were may be seen from 
the titles of the Tracts. They were such as these : 
Thoughts on the Ministerial Commission ; The Catholic 
Church ; Archbishop Ussher on Prayers for the Dead ; 
On Baptismal Regeneration ; On Apostolical Succes- 
sion ; On the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist ; On 
Purgatory ; On Reserve in communicating Religious 
Knowledge ; On Fasting ; On Holy Baptism. 1 

The Tracts were for the most part from Newman's 
pen. 2 When they first began to appear, they were 
hailed with welcome by the men who, throughout the 
kingdom, were dissatisfied with the existent life. But 
they presently became disturbing. The fear arose that 
if the English Church should be rehabilitated by these 
men, her children would not be able to recognize her in 
her new dress. This apprehension became a certainty 
when Newman put out Tract No. XC. In it he sus- 
tained the thesis that the teachings of the Thirty-nine 
Articles, "though the offspring of an uncatholic age, 
are, to say the least, not uncatholic, and may be sub- 

1 Tracts for the Times: 6 vols., Rivingtons, 1834. 

2 Stephens: Life of Dean Hook, p. 111. 



332 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

scribed to by those who aim at being catholic in 
heart and doctrine/' 1 What he meant by " catholic " 
became evident from the text. It meant something 
which plain men could not distinguish from Pomish. 
This had been steadfastly denied by the Tractarians. 
The via They had maintained that there was a Via 
Media. Media, a middle path^ between Koine and 

Protestantism, — that this middle term was Catholicity. 
But to the Tractarians this middle ground could not be 
satisfactory. They sought a position for the Church 
from which it could beat back the forces of liberalism. 
They found that Liberalism and Protestantism were 
the same in essence. The heart of each was private 
judgment as against authority. Newman came to see 
this before his fellows did. His quarrel was not with the 
current doctrine or practice of the Church, but with 
what he conceived to be a fatal tendency in society 
Newman's itself. " My battle was with Liberalism. 
purpose. ;gy Liberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic 
spirit and its development. It is scarcely now a party ; 
it is the educated lay world. It is nothing else than 
that deep, plausible skepticism which is the develop- 
ment of human reason as practically exercised by the 
natural man." 2 

His was a profound distrust of the spirit of the age. 
Against the incoming of this spirit he could see no 
barrier which he thought to be sufficient. He appealed 
therefore from the world to the Church, and from the 
Church of the present to the Church of the past. 

1 Introduction to Tract. No. XC. 

2 Apologia: New York, Catholic Publishing House, p. 285. 



THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE. 333 

Under his leadership a company of choice spirits set 
out upon a voyage of discovery through the centuries 
in search of a church which would be true enough to 
teach men, and strong enough to govern them. A deep 
interest had lately been awakened in the middle ages 
by the romances of Sir Walter Scott. 1 The wizard had 
cast a glamour over the pre-Reformation Church. With 
a profound disbelief in present inspiration, the Tracta- 
rians adventured hopefully to find a pure and perfect 
church at some point in the past. 

It is a common belief that a wish to reform glaring 

abuses then existent in the Church was a co-operative 

motive. There is little evidence of the exist- 

Tractarians 

not reform- ence of such abuses, and none of any attempt 
to reform them. It was not a beautiful age, 
but the Church in England and America seems to have 
been discharging her practical duties relatively as well 
as in any age. 2 The leaders of the " Oxford Move- 
ment" did not burden themselves with reform of evil 
manners. They had a different aim. Men could only 
be safe in thought and conduct when led by a visible 
Divine Authority. No trustworthy authority was ex- 
tant; they would find one in a restored and recon- 
structed Church. They gathered the materials for 
such a church painfully from various places and dates, 
and put them together in an ideal which they called a 

1 Fisher: History of Christian Church, p. 630. 

2 Mozley: Reminiscences, ch. li. 

2 Newman's account of his own religious life, Apologia: p. 56, 
"... Thomas Scott, to whom, humanly speaking, I owe my soul." 
2 Froude : Short Studies, Scribners, 1883, p 156. 
2 Dean Hook: Life, pp. <)<), 103. 
2 Beardsley: History of the Church in Connecticut, vol. ii. p. 244. 



) 



33 i THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Via Media between liberalism and papalism, between 
Protestantism and Romanism as they then were. This 
ideal was abandoned with scorn by its constructors, who 
went away by opposite roads, Newman and his friends 
to Rome, Froude and his friends to infidelity, Hook 
and his friends to the work they had been doing before 
the movement began. 

Before his departure Newman made a present of his 
Via Media : " Whether the ideas of the coming age 
upon religion be true or false, they will be real. In the 
present day mistiness is the mother of wisdom. A man 
who can set down half a dozen general propositions, 
which escape from destroying one another only by 
being diluted into truisms ; who can hold the balance 
between opposite sides so skilfully as to do without 
fulcrum or beam ; who never enunciates a truth with- 
out guarding himself against being supposed to exclude 
its contradictory ; who holds that Scripture is the only 
authority, yet that the Church is to be deferred to ; that 
faith only justifies, yet that it does not justify without 
works ; that grace does not depend on the sacraments, 
yet is not given without them ; that bishops are a 
divine ordinance, yet those who have them not are in 
the same religious condition as those who have ; — this 
state of things cannot go on if men are to read and 
think. They cannot go on forever standing on one leg, 
or sitting without a chair, or walking with their feet 
tied, or grazing like Tityrus' stags in the air. They 
will take one view or other, but it will be a consistent 



view. 



" 1 



1 Apologia, p. 144. 



THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE. 335 

Those who fell heir to this contemptuous gift brought 

it to America, Upon its arrival here it 
The Via r 

Media in found, in rough, three classes of Church- 

A mp pi i* 3. 

men, at whose hands it received a various 
reception. 1 

There were, first, the Evangelicals, who had drawn 
their inspiration from the same pietistic revival which 
had originally revolted the Tractarians. These turned 
away from it with anger and contempt. To their minds 
the very principle of authority was abhorrent, and of 
all authorities, ecclesiastical was the worst- 
There were, second, the Laudian, non-juring, Seabury 
type, who gave it a guarded and cautious welcome. Its 
seeming reverence for antiquity appeared to them to be 
a desirable re-enforcement to their spirit of conservatism. 
But this class was small in numbers and in influence. 
The men who had once belonged to it had been suc- 
ceeded by men of Hobart's school. Their vigorous 
Americanism, and their absorption in practical work, 
prevented the mass of High Churchmen from becoming 
either doctrinaires or ritualists. 

In the third place were the distinctly American 
Churchmen. The principle of Authority, in the Ox- 
ford sense, was not grateful to them ; but they were 
accustomed to a legally regulated liberty. This clas3 
embraced a large proportion of the clergy and most of 
American the l a ity. They had been accustomed to 
Churchmen, think and speak of themselves as Protestants. 
They possessed to a marked degree that broad, prac- 
tical, clear-sighted wisdom which had belonged to the 

1 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 192-4. 



336 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

first generation of English reformers. They differed 
widely from their contemporary English Churchmen. 
Y There was hardly any class there to which they corre- 

al sponded. They had not been reared upon Evangeli- 

calism ; but no more were they Anglo-Catholics. They 
\ called themselves Episcopalians. It was rather the 

Church's present life than its past history which at- 
tracted and held them. Antiquity did not, to their 
minds, carry obligation with it. They compared the 
Church with the other forms which Christianity pre- 
sented here in America, and it commended itself to 
their judgments and consciences. They neither hailed 
nor feared the Oxford Movement for themselves, but 
they were often disturbed by the phenomena which it 
produced in the Church which they loved. Chiefly 
they feared that if it prevailed it would set the Church 
in hopeless antagonism to their Protestant neighbors. 
For, while they did not declaim against the Pope, and 
thought it ill-bred to call Rome the scarlet whore, they 
did not shut their eyes to the fact that the}' were more 
akin to Protestantism than they were to her. 

But from all of these groups the movement drew 
recruits. It drew as with a magnet a certain type of 
men. They who loved symmetry of doctrine so much 
that they could hold to a system in spite of the contra- 
dictory facts of human life ; they who distrusted them- 
selves and shrank from the labor of ordering their own 
religious conduct; they whose imagination was kindled 
by the thought of a visible, holy, dominant, spiritual 
mistress, — these were attracted by that method of liv- 
ing whose rationale had been stated in Dean Hook's 



THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE. 337 

sermon before the Queen, " Hear the Church." 1 This 
principle being accepted, an importance and a value 
were attributed to the rules, rituals, ordinances, and 
offices of the Church, which these did not have before. 
They became obligatory, not only or chiefly because 
they were intrinsically fit or excellent, but because they 
were of authority. Possessing such wisdom and power, 
the " Church " should, through her ordinances and 
officials, touch each soul at every point and moment of 
its earthly history. 

That no objective fact does now, or ever has, corre- 
sponded to this ideal of the " Church," did not disturb 
Anglo- those who were under the domination of the 

Catholics. idea. They chose from one century of the 
past one feature, and another from another, and com- 
bined them into their simulacrum. They were not in 
love, after all, with any outward mistress, but with 
an inward habit of prostration. Nor did the fact that 
Newman had declared the position indefensible, and 
abandoned it, disturb them. They were not logicians. 
They had not been drawn to their position by argu- 
ment, nor would they be driven from it by a syllogism. 
Their instinct was wiser than their acts. The vitality 
of the movement lay in the fact that it was an honestly 
meant attempt to bring the Church of England out of 
its isolation, and into harmony with the Christian life 
of the ages. But they who joined in it became so 
engrossed with the task of re-establishing connection 
with the past that they fell out of sympathy with the 
Christian life of the present. They adopted an offen- 

1 Stephens: Life of Dean Hook, p. 251. 



338 THE PKOTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

sive cant. Terms so old that they had become new and 
strange found the place of honor in their vocabulary. 
The very term "catholic " upon their lips misled. Their 
\l Avhole speech was strange. Their peculiar distribution 

of emphasis among doctrines ; their manner of conduct- 
ing services ; the way in which they set forth the 
Time of Church's attitude to the Christian world, — 

strife. a v} these raised a storm of strife which lasted 

half a century. Bishops charged against them ; 1 and 
bishops came to their rescue. 2 Bishop Mcllvaine con- 
troverted the new views in his " Oxford Theology." 
Dr. Sparrow dissected them in his class-room at the 
Virginia Seminary. Dr. John S. Stone, in his " Chris- 
tian Sacraments," said the final word for the Evangeli- 
cal side. The Evangelical Knowledge Society was 
founded as a counteracting propaganda. 

On the other side Dr. Hugh Davey Evans spoke the 
most potent words in " The True Catholic." Dr. Kip 
sent forth the " Double Witness of the Church." Dr. 
Wainwright defended the position that " There cannot 
be a Church without a Bishop." 3 

In all this the good providence, which had been work- 
ing fifty years to cement the loose federation into a com- 
pact whole, became evident. A generation earlier, the 
same strain would have rent the Church in pieces. Had 
the State autonomy, which once existed, still survived, 
the bond of union would have snapped. In 1844, the 

1 Beardsley: History of Church in Connecticut, vol. ii. p. 329. 
1 Johns: Life of Bishop Meade, p. 258. 

1 Green : Life of Bishop Otey, p. G6\ 

2 Perry : History, vol. ii. p. 269. 

3 Julius H. Ward, in Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 619. 



THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE. 339 

matter was brought formally before the General Con- 
vention. 1 The Church was asked to speak her mind 
upon "the serious errors in doctrine which have within 
a few years been introduced and extensively promul- 
gated by means of tracts, the press, and the pulpit." 
After days of debate, with resolutions, amendments, 
amendments to amendments, substitutes and divisions, 
the Convention dismissed the subject with the declara- 
tion, in effect, that the Church's formularies show her 
doctrine clearly enough for any one to comprehend who 
wants to comprehend; and that "the Church is not 
responsible for the errors of individuals, whether they 
be members of this Church or not." 2 

Whether the things in dispute were really " errors " 
in doctrine remained undecided. It remains undecided 
yet. But it seemed clear to most that their introduc- 
tion imported grave danger to the Church. It was 
feared that they would make of her a training-school for 
Rome. For some years, that seemed likely. For two 
centuries the Roman Church had been a feeble and 
insignificant factor in AnTerican life. With the deca- 
dence of Lord Baltimore's colony in the seventeenth 
century, it had well-nigh gone out. But its hierarchy 
had now been established for more than sixty years. 
During these years it had grown so slowly that it had 
attracted little attention. But when the tide of Irish 
immigration set in in 1848, Romanism began to flourish. 
Anglo-Catholicism and Roman Catholicism came in 
together. Many feared that there was a relationship 

1 Gen. Con. Journal, 1814. 

2 lb. 



340 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

between them. It began to seem so. 1 In England, as 
a direct consequence of the revived ecclesiasticism, such 
Converts great names as Newman, Manning, Oakley, 
and perverts. Faber, Wilberf orce, Palmer, and Ward passed 
from the Church's rolls to the lists of Rome. In 
America, Bishop Ives of North Carolina, and a group 
of men of lesser station but greater character, followed 
in the same path. But the general apostacy for which 
many looked did not occur. The facts seemed to point 
to a different outcome, as the event has shown. The 
sum total of the losses to the Roman Catholic Church 
in Great Britain up to 1888, including clergy and laity, 
men and women, falls below two thousand. That is to 
sa} 7 , an average of thirty-five persons per year have left 
the Church of England for Rome during the last sixty 
years. One large parish church would hold them all, 
living and dead. The loss from the American Church 
has been much less, both absolutely and in proportion. 
Nor is it speaking beyond bounds to say that for every 
one thus lost, five have come from Rome to the Church. 
The defection was greatest at its beginning, both in 
numbers and still more in quality. Since then it has 
steadily fallen off. 2 

How much of the revived ecclesiasticism which marks 
the century is to be referred to the Oxford Movement, and 

1 Brand: Life of Bishop Whittingham, vol. ii. p. 353, et seq. 

2 Quarterly Review, No. 331, p. 31, et seq. 

2 Cf. Our Losses, a letter to the Rev. J. A. Canon Wenharn, by Rev. 
G. Bampfield. 

Annals of the Catholic Hierarchy in England and Scotland: by 
W. Maziere Brady. 

Converts to Rome: W. Gordon Gorman. 

The Present State of the Church in England : by Lord Bray. 

The Catholic Directory: London, 1888. 



THE CATHOLIC RENAISSANCE. 341 

how much to the influences at work antecedently and 

outside of it, cannot be known. Nor can the goal to 

which it tends be clearly seen as yet. The 

Good and J J 

evil of the process had not run its course within the 
movemen . period of this book. It has not done so yet. 
But it affected the Protestant Episcopal Church pro- 
foundly, both for good and ill. On the one hand, it 
recalled men from the selfish pursuit of salvation as iso- 
lated individuals, and warned them that even in religion 
" no man liveth unto himself alone." It brought into 
clear view the obscured truth of the community of the 
saints, semper, ubique, et ah omnibus. It imported a 
new reverence into divine worship and uncovered the 
meaning of Christ's Sacraments. 

On the other hand, it segregated the Church Catholic 
too sharply from the common moral life of humanity. 
It placed the Episcopal Church in a false attitude 
towards its contemporaries. It produced a timid, eccle- 
siastical temper. It tempted men to say, " Master, we 
saw one casting out devils, and we forbade him because 
he followeth not with us." A century earlier, in Penn- 
sylvania and Delaware, the Swedish clergy entered the 
Church without question asked on either side. While the 
Tractarians were students of divinity, the High Church- 
man Bishop Ravenscroft of North Carolina did not hesi- 
tate to join with the Moravian Bishop Benade in the Holy 
Eucharist. 1 Without any change of law, this hospitable 
attitude was lost. The loss was great to all concerned. 

Meanwhile the Church proceeded on her way sadly 
distracted with the strife of tongues. 

1 Norton: Life of Bishop Ravenscroft, p. 126. 



342 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



\ 



\ CHAPTER X. 

A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET. 

When the catholic nature of the Church came to be 
more clearly seen, it became evident that the Protest- 
ant Episcopal Church did not adequately represent the 
ideal. The isolation in the Christian world, which had 
been its fortune for three hundred years, had affected it 
in mind and structure. It was organized and equipped 
as a sect, and to do a sect's work. Its awakened sense 
of catholicity required a broader outlook. It must 
establish relations with society. Noblesse oblige. But 
the common people of America were indifferent or 
antipathetic. The same movement which had brought 
the Church to a better understanding of herself had 
operated to turn the people from her. The ratio of 
growth was steadily declining. 1 The population was 
advancing with gigantic strides. The Church crept 

tardilv after. The people neither under- 
Falling be- J r r 
hind the stood nor cared for her. The more her chih 
popu a ion. ^ Ten i ove( j an( j believed in her, the more 
they grieved. The people would not weep to her 
mourning or dance to her piping. The fault could not 
be lack of zeal, for no class of men could be found 
more earnest or tireless than her ministers. Twenty 

1 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 382. 



A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET. 343 

years before, the Church had formally declared that all 
her children were missionaries by virtue of their bap- 
tism. It had undertaken in its organized capacity to 
win the nation. Who could be more zealous than Polk, 
more faithful than Whittingham, more apostolic than 
Kemper, more saintly than Otey, or wiser than De 
Lancey ? But still the Church's growth was not com- 
mensurate either with her own character or with the 
energy expended. The controversialists on either hand 
were not seriously disturbed. Their thoughts were 
engrossed. But a class of men, inspired with a deep 
feeling of the Church's real work in the nation, pon- 
dered the matter deeply. Two men — the greatest the 
American Church has yet produced — saw the situa- 
tion more clearly than their fellows. Dr. Muhlenberg 
A Church or perceived it as a seer ; Bishop Alonzo Potter 
a sect? saw it as a statesman. The Church's theory 

was catholic ; her methods were denominational. The 
head and the hands were not in harmony, and the heart 
was torn between them. Wise men had discovered the 
evil and tried to find a cure. The New York Revieiv 
(1837-1842) had tried to bring the Church into touch 
with the thought of the time. Dr. Muhlenberg", in the 
Evangelical Catholic, had set out her place in Christian 
society with a wealth of thought and charm of spirit 
never since equalled. His voice had not been noticed 
in the din of controversy, but he had spoken the 
thought of the best and wisest men in the Church. 

When the General Convention met in 1853, the 
following Memorial was laid before the House of 
Bishops : — 



344 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Eight Eeverend Fathers : — The undersigned, pres- 
byters of the Church of which you have the oversight, 
Ths Memo- venture to approach your venerable body with a 
rial. sentiment which their estimate of your office 

in relation to the times does not permit them to withhold. 
In so doing they have confidence in your readiness to 
appreciate their motives and their aims. 

The actual posture of our Church, with reference to the 
great moral and social necessities of the day, presents to 
the minds of the undersigned a subject of grave and anxious 
thought. Did they suppose that this was confined to them- 
selves they would not feel warranted in submitting it to 
your attention; but they believe it to be participated in 
by many of their brethren, who may not have seen the 
expediency of declaring their views, or at least a mature 
season for such a course. 

The divided and distracted state of our American Prot- 
estant Christianity ; the new and subtle forms of unbelief, 
adapting themselves with fatal success to the spirit of the 
age ; the consolidated forces of Romanism, bearing with 
renewed skill and activity against the Protestant faith : 
and, as more or less the consequence of these, the utter 
ignorance of the Gospel among so large a portion of the 
lower classes of our population, making a heathen world in 
our midst ; are among the considerations which induce 
your memorialists to present the inquiry whether the 
period has not arrived for the adoption of measures, to 
meet these exigencies of the times, more comprehensive than 
any yet provided for by our present ecclesiastical system ; 
In other words, whether the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
with only her present canonical means and appliances, her 
fixed and invariable modes of public worship, her tradi- 
tional customs and usages, is competent to the work of 



A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET. 345 

preaching and dispensing the Gospel to all sorts and con- 
ditions of men, and so, adequate to do the work of the Lord 
in this land and in this age ? This question, your peti- 
tioners for their own part, and in consonance with many 
thoughtful minds among us, believe must be answered in 
the negative. Their memorial proceeds on the assumption 
that our Church, confined to the exercises of her present 
system, is not sufficient to the great purposes above men- 
tioned ; that a wider door must be opened for the admission 
to the Gospel ministry than that through which her candi- 
dates for holy orders are now obliged to enter. Besides 
such candidates among her own members, it is believed 
that men can be found among the other bodies of Christians 
around us, who would gladly receive ordination at your 
hands, could they obtain it without that entire surrender, 
which would now be required of them, of all the liberty in 
public worship to which they have been accustomed ; men, 
who could not bring themselves to conform in all particu- 
lars to our prescriptions and customs, but yet sound in the 
faith, and who, having the gifts of preachers and pastors, 
would be able ministers of the ISTew Testament. With 
deference it is asked, ought such an accession to your 
means in executing your high commission, "Go into all 
the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature," be 
refused, for the sake of conformity in matters recognized 
in the preface to the Book of Common Prayer as unessen- 
tials ? Dare Ave pray the Lord of harvests to send forth 
laborers into the harvest, while we reject all laborers but 
those of one peculiar type ? The extension of orders to 
the class of -men contemplated (with whatever safeguards, 
not infringing on evangelical freedom, which your wisdom 
might deem expedient), appears to your petitioners to be a 
subject supremely worthy of your deliberations. 



346 TEE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

In addition to the prospect of the immediate good which 
would thus be opened, an important step would be taken 
towards the effecting of a Church unity in the Protestant 
\| Christendom of our land. To become a central bond of 

union among Christians, who, though differing in name, 
yet hold to the one Faith, the one Lord, the one Baptism ; 
and, who need only such a bond to be drawn together in 
closer and more primitive fellowship, is here believed to 
be the peculiar province and high privilege of your vener- 
able body as a college of Cu.tholic and Apostolic Bishops as 
such, 

This leads your petitioners to declare the ultimate design 
of their memorial ; which is to submit the practicability, 
under your auspices, of some ecclesiastical system, broader 
and more comprehensive than that which you now admin- 
ister, surrounding and including the Protestant' Episcopal 
Church as it now is, leaving that church untouched, identi- 
cal with that church in all its great principles, yet provid- 
ing for as much freedom in opinion, discipline, and worship, 
as is compatible with the essential faith and order of the 
Gospel. To define and act upon such a system, it is be- 
lieved, must sooner or later be the work of an American 
Catholic Episcopate. 

In justice to themselves, on this occasion, your memo- 
rialists beg leave to remark that, although aware that the 
foregoing views are not confined to their own small number, 
they have no reason to suppose that any other parties con- 
template a public expression of them, like the present. 
Having therefore undertaken it, they trust that they have 
not laid themselves open to the charge of unwarrantable 
intrusion. They find their warrant in the prayer now 
offered up by all congregations, " that the comfortable 
Gospel of Christ may be truly preached, truly received, 






A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET. 347 

and truly followed in all places, to the breaking down the 
kingdom of Sin, Satan, and Death." Convinced that, for 
the attainment of these blessed ends, there must be some 
greater concert of action among Protestant Christians than 
any which yet exists, and believing that with you, Right 
Reverend Fathers, it rests to take the first measures tend- 
ing thereto, we could do no less than humbly submit this 
memorial to such consideration as in your wisdom you may 
see fit to give it. 

Assuring you, Right Reverend Fathers, of our dutiful 
veneration and esteem, 

We are, most respectfully, 

Your Brethren and Servants in the Gospel of Christ : 

W. A. Muhlenberg, C. F. Cruse, 

Philip Berry, Edwin Harwood, 

G. T. Bedell, Henry Gregory, 

Alex. H. Vinton, M. A. DeWolfe Howe, 

S. H. Turner, S. R. Johnson, 

C. W. Andrews. F. E. Lawrence, 
and others. 

Concurring in the main purport of the memorial, but not 
able to subscribe to all its details, the following names 
were subscribed : 

John Henry Hobart, A. Cleveland Coxe, 
E. Y. Higbee, Francis Vinton, 

Isaac G. Hubbard, and others. 

What the Memorialists proposed was at once simple 
and revolutionary. They meant, in good faith, to put 
the catholic theory of the Church to the experimentum 
cruris. " The great catholic idea of the Church may be 



! 



348 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

fully developed by more thoroughly adapting it to all 
the wants of the country and the times." 1 Their object- 
ive point was the emancipation of the Episcopate. 2 

Their action had other aims as well, but this 
Emancipa- 
tion of was the chief. The Episcopate was the dif- 

1S ops * ferentiate of the Church in America. In 
Rome it was in subjection to the Pope. In England it 
was fettered by the State. Here it was tied by conven- 
tional rules, so that it was powerless to act beyond the 
borders of the Protestant Episcopal sect, and even 
within them was checked at every turn. Protestants 
might stretch out their hands for it in vain. It must 
be refused unless they would consent to take with it all 
the peculiarities of the sect which possessed it. This, 
the Memorialists maintained, was uncatholic. They 
saw, farther, that if the Episcopate should continue to 
be deprived of its original powers, and reduced to an 
office of petty routine, it would soon come to be filled 
by petty men. They believed that to claim for the 
office a divine grace, and then to bind it into helpless- 
ness from fear of the human infirmities of the men who 
filled it, was but solemn trifling. 

In the second place, they asserted that the Liturgy, 3 
which they themselves delighted in, was a stumbling- 
Loosening of block to 'thousands, who, but for it, would 
rubrics. accept the essentials of the Church ; that the 

principle of compulsory uniformity upon which the 
Church was acting, was not only uncatholic but foolish ; 



1 Resolution of Rhode Island Diocese, 1856. 

2 Evangelical Catholic Papers, p. 181. 

3 lb., p. 163, et seq. 



A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET. 349 

that the Prayer-Book was constructed for the use of 
well-ordered and well-trained parishes, whereas the 
Church's work would be, for many a day to come, 
among those whose customs and prejudices rendered 
it ungrateful to them; that as "good wine needs no 
bush," the Liturgy might be trusted to make its own 
way into general use by its own intrinsic excellence. 

A third purpose was to restore a disused force by 

reviving the lower order of the ministry. There were 

then but thirty-seven deacons in the Church; 

Revival of J 

theDiaco- there should, and might readily have been, 
five thousand. The ministry was practically 
closed against all applicants save a small class of men, 
with peculiar qualifications, hard to attain, and not 
guaranteeing efficiency when attained. The various 
sections of the broad vineyard demanded laborers of 
various sorts. The masses of the people could not be 
touched but by men from among themselves. A dea- 
con's work required character rather than education, 1 
and tent-makers might yet work with their own hands, 
not being chargeable to any man, and still be apostolic. 
Above all, they lamented that the door was barred 
against the ministers of the Protestant world. One of 
these could enter only " by painful steps and slow." 
While waiting the long period of probation, — a proba- 
tion not required of a Roman priest of far inferior char- 
acter, — he became separated from his own people, so 
that he must come alone and a stranger. 

The ultimate object toward which all their aims 

1 Howe: Memoirs of Bishop Alonzo Potter, p. 185. 



! 






350 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

pointed was the Unity of Protestant Christendom. 1 
The Protestant Episcopal Church, standing as the repre- 
Church sentative of Catholicity in America, had her 

unitv - task assigned by God. She was to keep 

open communication with the past. She was to be the 
tertium quid to produce union in the present. 

But to do this last she must move freely among the 
broken mass. This, the Memorialists contended, she 
could not do under her present self-imposed limitations. 

The Memorial was received by the Convention with 
the consideration which the names of its signers could 
not but secure. It was referred to a committee com- 
posed of Bishops Otej^, Doane, Alonzo Potter, Burgess, 
Williams, and Wainwright. 2 They were instructed to 
report to the next Convention. Bishop Alonzo Pot- 
ter took charge of the measure, became its advocate, 
counsellor, and historian. 3 It at once arrested the 
attention of the whole Church. For several years little 
else was thought or spoken of. Especially among the 
younger, clergy and laymen did it commend itself. 4 
Diocesan conventions discussed it, and passed resolu- 
tions for or against its proposals. 5 Church newspapers 
advocated or denounced it. Sermons, pamphlets, maga- 
zine articles, and books were written about it. The 
committee which had it in charge circulated a list of 
questions concerning it, to which they solicited replies. 

1 Evangelical Catholic Papers, p. 322. 

2 Memorial Papers: with an introduction by Right Rev. Alonza 
Potter, Philadelphia, 1857, p. 36. 

3 Memorial Papers. 

4 lb., p. vii. 

5 Green: Life of Bishop Otey, p. 60. 



A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET. 351 

These questions show that the members of the commit- 
tee either but dimly appreciated its import, or else did 
not care to consider the fundamental problems at issue. 
They relate for the most part to details of subordinate 
importance. 1 The replies they received are directed 
some to one and some to another of the queries, and 
some to the principles involved. 2 

Bishop Doane of New Jersey, in his reply, falls foul 
of Sunday-schools, as being destructive of home training 
Divers °^ children, advocates parish schools wherein 

opinions. the youth of the country may be taught in 
the spirit of the Church ; and recommends that schools 
of theology be multiplied and localized in various sec- 
tions of the country, so that the ministry may be more 
in touch with the people whom it is called to serve. 

Bishop Potter of Pennsylvania alone goes to the root 
of the matter. He advises : to leave to each diocese the 
power to fix the terms of admission to its own ministry, 
as best knowing its own needs ; to receive Protestant 
ministers whenever they are ready and fit to come, the 
diocesan authorities passing upon each case as it arises; 
to exploit the plan of an unlearned diaconate as pro- 
posed in 1853, allowing each diocese to receive its own, 
and not compelling any other diocese to accept them 
for duty ; leave congregations which are ready to re- 
ceive an episcopally ordained minister to use the 
Liturgy or not as they see fit, — as Bishop Kemper 
had so wisely done with the Swedish and Norwegian 



1 Memorial Papers, pp. 37-^0. 

2 The substance of the answers is in all cases condensed from the papers 
edited and published by Bishop Potter as Memorial Papers. 






352 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Lutherans in Wisconsin ; abandon the idea of enforced 
uniformity in worship, as uncatholic and disastrous 
wherever it has been attempted. 

Bishop Burgess of Maine recommends to revise the 
Liturgy so as to make it more fit, and, having done so, 
exact its use ; when it has been used in any case, allow 
supplementary extemporary prayers. 

Bishop Williams of Connecticut advises district visit- 
ing ; that missionary priests are indeed needed, but 
must be chosen according to a universal standard, and 
sent under diocesan control. As to unlearned deacons, 
he doubts, but if there should be such, they must with- 
draw from secular employment. He had " prepared 
some further remarks on the general subject of Chris- 
tian unity, designed to show that restraints, doctrinal 
and other, under which we are placed, are not mere 
accidents, and indications of sectarianism, taken up at 
will, but things rendered necessary by the abnormal 
condition of Christendom, and forming part and parcel 
of our true Catholicity," — but omits them for lack of 
space. 

Bishop Meade of Virginia believes that the services 
are too long; that the minister should be allowed to 
select the psalms ; that there should be liberty to omit 
the term " regenerate " in baptism. 

Bishop Polk replies that among the people of the 
Southwest the Liturgy is a distinct hindrance ; that it 
is too long, and the rubrics too rigid ; that it should be 
left more to the discretion of the minister ; that many 
of his people cannot read at all ; that a learned and an 
unlearned ministry are both needed. 



A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET. 353 

Bishop Freeman was opposed to the whole agitation ; 
" would never consent to touch in the minutest par- 
ticular the integrity of the Liturgy ; " would allow no 
"relaxation whatever in the conditions of admitting 
other ministers; — they do not want to come any way." 

Bishop Upfold denies the premises ; the Church has, 
all things considered, grown wonderfully ; would not 
consent to touch the Liturgy ; would make the terms 
of admission for other ministers harder than they are. 

Bishop Scott denies the premises ; would allow no 
relaxation even if they were true. 

Dr. Bowman thinks the memorialists should be con- 
tent with the unlearned diaconate. 

Dr. Coxe recommends a primer where the Liturgy 
cannot be used ; and calls attention to the Moravian 
Church as a factor in the problem of unity. 

Dr. Craik thinks that the door towards Protestantism 
is too wide open already ; better that some within were 
shut outside. 

Dr. Francis Vinton believes that the whole jurisdic- 
tion in the province of ordination should be left with 
the bishop, to whom it inherently belongs ; that the 
General Convention had acted ultra vires in its legisla- 
tion upon the matter ; that the bishop should ordain fit 
men, and then be only too glad to have them serve 
Presbyterian or other congregations if they had the 
chance, without any question of the use of the Liturgy. 

A Presbyterian divine says the safety of the sects 
(sic) depends upon the continued rigidity of the Church ; 
if that should be abandoned, their existence would be 
endangered. 



354 



THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



\ 






A Congregational divine indorses the position of the 
memorialists as being in the general interest of American 
Christianity. 

A Baptist divine asserts that if the Church could 
but find a way to reach the masses she could effect 
more than all others. 

A German Reformed divine states that they also are 
preparing a Liturgy, and would gladly draw nearer to 
the Church. 

A Methodist divine answers that the Church possesses 
those things which are abiding, and the Methodists 
those which are discretionary ; that each might help 
the other. 

The Committee, having thus gathered opinions from 
those whom they thought best qualified to speak, and 
having listened to the discussion which for three years 
had filled the air, reported to the General Convention of 
A true bill 1856, that the statements of the Memorialists 
found. were true ; that " the Church is by no means 

keeping pace with the population;" that the "growth 
in the last half century furnishes matter of deep humili- 
ation and shame ; " that the Liturgy is not suited to all 
the work required of it; that both diocesan conven- 
tions and representative men agree as to the facts of 
the case; that there is a wide-spread desire for a more 
efficient policy. 

In the way of cure, they recommend extemporaneous 
preaching ; lay work ; sisterhoods ; more frequent serv- 
ices ; a more hospitable bearing toward other churches ; 
a formal declaration by the House of Bishops that 
Morning Prayer, Litany, and Holy Communion are 




A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET. 355 

distinct services, and need not be said together; a 
standing committee of five bishops to receive proposals 
concerning Christian unity; to allow diocesan bishops 
the power to set forth services for special occasions. 

The recommendations were all adopted, — and the 
situation remained unchanged. The action failed to 
touch the issue. Dr. Muhlenberg wrote, " It is the 
genius of Catholicity now knocking at the Church's 
doors. Let her refuse to open. Let her, if she will, 
make them faster still, with new bolts and bars, and 
then take her rest, to dream a wilder dream than any of 
the Memorial : of becoming the Catholic Church of 
these United States." x 

Twenty years later, Dr. Washburn declared that 
" had the Memorial prevailed, we should have been 
spared the two worst misfortunes which have since 
befallen us. The conscientious men of ritualistic type, 
instead of defying law for chasubles and candles, would 
have thrown their devotion into noble work; and the 
conscientious men who have only added another Re- 
formed Episcopal fragment to the atoms floating in 
A fatal Christian space would have remained con- 

choice. tent w i t h j ust freedom." 2 The Church had 

the choice set before her to be Catholic or to be sec- 
tarian. She chose the latter. She exalted her customs 
above her principles. The choice threw her back more 
than a gene rat ion. 

Men being what they are, no other choice could well 
have been expected. The Lower House had already 

1 Evangelical Catholic Papers, p. 325. 

2 Ayres: Life of Dr. Muhlenberg, p. 273. 



I 



356 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

begun to think of itself as the Church. It was jealous 
of Episcopal prerogative, and out of touch with the 
people. While the Church remained a federation of 
States neither of these mistakes was possible. Each del- 
egation then instinctively sought to know and do the 
will of its own people. That allegiance had been insen- 
sibly withdrawn from the local church and given to the 
general body. The people of the dioceses had come to 
be the constituencies ; but the representation had not 
yet been apportioned to their numbers. The General 
Convention grew remote. The time came when its 
deliverances were little heeded. It came to have a life 
of its own, apart from the common life of the Church. 
It feared anything which might derange that life. A 
catholic policy would surely have done so. 

Spirit of r J j 

General Con- Party leaders in it feared what might prove 
to be an opponent's advantage. Men were 
not willing to intrust others with a liberty which they 
would have welcomed for themselves. Timidity, mis- 
called conservatism, shrank from change. As always, 
men whose vision is acute within a narrow range re- 
fused to trust the sight of others who were able to see 
the end. The Church acquiesced in the decision, as it 
would have done in its opposite. But the opportunity 
had been lost. The Church had not been able to see 
the things which belonged to her peace. 

The canon allowing an unlearned diaconate was 
passed ; but it proved an empty gain. 1 It was an in- 
strument which would not operate in the machinery of 
which it formed a part. It was discredited from the 

1 Howe: Memoirs of Bishop Alonzo Potter, p. 186. 









A PLACE WHERE TWO WAYS MEET. 357 

start. Some bishops would not use it when they could; 
others could not when they would. Its necessity was 
presently obscured by the makeshift of " licensed lay 
readers," — as if any license were needed for a layman 
to do his ordinary duty. 

It remained for another generation of men, spiritual 
sons of the Memorialists, to take up again the work of 
Liturgical revision and Christian Unity. Dr. Muhlen- 
berg retired to his schools, his hospitals, his free church, 
Bishop Potter took up again his labor of organizing the 
religious life, leading the thought, and caring for the 
poor of his great diocese. Their associates stood in 
their own lots, exemplifying catholicity in life and work. 
The Church held on her narrow way. Within the 
limits she had fixed for herself, her life was active, and, 
judged by her own standard, successful. The general 
religious movement of the land went on its course, little 
affected by her. But she was not unmindful of the 
spiritual needs of her own children, either in the old 
States or in the far West. 

The -same Convention which received the Memorial 

sent two bishops to the Pacific Coast. California was 

then four months' journey from New York. 
Progress ia 
a narrow Population was pouring into it from all four 

quarters of the globe. Long lines of "prairie 

schooners" were winding their tedious way across the 

plains of Kansas and Nebraska, through the passes of the 

Rocky Mountains, and down the slopes of the Sierras, 

carrying the seekers after gold. Another stream was 

struggling through the swamps and miasmas of "the 

Isthmus," and still another battling its stormy path 



358 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

"around the Horn," to the same El Dorado. Its rough, 
turbulent, picturesque life was at its height. Among 
Church in the eari i es t comers were clergy of the Church. 
California. ^he Rev. Dr. Ver Mehr was among the 
" forty-niners." He gathered a little congregation, and 
lield services in a rude San Francisco shanty. Things 
moved rapidly there. In 1850 the first "Convention 
of the Church in California " was held in San Francisco, 
and six clergy were present. It did not regard itself as 
a part of the Church in the United States. It was an 
independent organization, and looked at first to the 
Greek Church for the Episcopate. 1 It was far nearer, 
geographically, to the Greek Church in Alaska than to 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in the States. But 
when three years more had passed, the swift changes of 
population which marked the time and place had left 
the Church almost extinct. Some of the clergy were 
sick, some dead, some moved away, and some smitten 
with the " gold fever." In 1853 the General Conven- 

(tion chose the Rev. Dr. Kip as bishop, and sent him to 
build the Protestant Episcopal Church in California. 

In 1851 the Board of Missions sent the Rev. William 
Richmond to Oregon. When he arrived, he found St. 
Church in Michael Fackler, a faithful priest from Mis- 
Oregon, souri, living and working in Willamette Val- 
ley. In 1853, three clergy and seven laymen met at 
Oregon City and organized the Church in Oregon. 
The same year, the General Convention chose the Rev. 
Dr. Thomas Fielding Scott to be its bishop. 

Iowa, Texas, Minnesota, and Arkansas were, a few 

1 Bishop Kip, in Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 314. 






A PLACE WHEliE TWO WAYS MEET. 359 

years later, detached from the great Missionary Juris- 
dictions, and placed under bishops of their own. 

But the thought and energy of the time were being 
more and more withdrawn from the affairs of the 
Church, and absorbed in the condition of the nation. 
The mutterings of the coming storm of war were 
already heard. It was possible that the American 
Church might soon be broken up together with the 
nation in which it dwelt. 



360 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



\ 



CHAPTER XL 

IN WAR TIME. 

The same institution whose presence in America 

ultimately caused secession had long before caused 

ecclesiastical divisions. The " great seces- 

Division of . -h^ai- a t t -**■ t ™ 

Churches sion in 1845 had split the Methodist Church 
up s avery. . q ^^ Q ne f its bishops had been found 

to be " an owner of slaves, by marriage." 1 He was 
required to purge himself of his fault or lay down his 
office. The Southern delegates stood by him, and the 
Methodist Church South was organized. 

In 1857 the "New School Presbyterian Church" 
took similar ground in an expression of opinion upon 
the Fugitive Slave Law, whereupon several Southern 
presbyteries withdrew from their connection, and 
became the nucleus around which the Southern Pres- 
byterian Church was built in 1861. 2 

Among the Baptists, and all denominations of Con- 
gregational type, there had been, of course, no formal 
separation, for there had never been any organic union, 
but their formal " fellowship " had long stopped at 
Mason and Dixon's line. 

The Church of Rome had never divided upon the 
question for quite a different reason. Her unity has 

1 Stevens: American Methodism, pp. 525-6. 

2 Schaff-Herzog Encycl., p. 1908. 






IN WAR TIME. 361 

nothing to do with the unity of national life, but is 
centred in a foreign potentate. But all American 
churches, except the Protestant Episcopal, had ranged 
themselves toward the same question of negro slavery, 
which was working to a settlement in the national life. 

These foregone ecclesiastical divisions had much to 
do with making political separation possible. 1 They 
had familiarized people's minds with the idea. They 
had withdrawn members of the same spiritual family so 
far away from each other that mutual understanding 
became impossible. 

In the Episcopal Church this was not the case. Its 
members North and South were in more friendly rela- 
tion, and had a better comprehension of each 

Episcopal x 

Church not other's thought upon the fundamental ques- 
tion, than had the members of any other 
organization, religious or secular. The Church had 
never called slave-holding a sin. It had never made it 
a matter of discipline. It saw more clearly than did 
the divided denominations what were the real difficul- 
ties involved in its settlement. At the organization of 
the Church, its members felt about the matter as did 
the great mass of the Christian people of their time. 
Slavery was then common to all the colonies. It was 
accepted as part of the constitution of things. Its prac- 
tical evils were evident to many, but in itself it was 
generally accepted to be warranted by Scripture and 
ancient custom. But a sentiment against it was even 
then rising. The social and political ills attached to the 
institution were becoming apparent. There was an 

i Johns: Life of Bishop Meade, pp. 492, 494. 



362 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

instinct that it was antagonistic to the fundamental 
conception of American political life. This sentiment 
gained ground slowly, but surely, in the Northern States. 
As it spread it produced gradual emancipation. But 
this had taken effect so recently in many Northern States 
that the old way of regarding slavery, in theory, had not 
been changed. It had been seen to be practicably un- 
desirable, but not morally indefensible. The great mass 
of Northern people did not think themselves 

General sen- 
timent of the to be partakers of other men's sins by living 

in a government which permitted it within 
its borders. They did not forget that they had lately 
shared the sin, if it were one. So late as 1850 there 
were still slaves in New York, New Jersey, and Penn- 
sylvania. 1 In 1860 there were still living in the prime 
of life colored men who had been born bondsmen in 
the Northern States. But for a generation the relation 
of the general government toward slavery had been the 
burning question. It had engaged men's thoughts and 
emotions far more deeply than any issue that has con- 
fronted them, before or since. The Church was blamed 
for her attitude. Some of her own children thought 
and spoke of her with shame. They begged her to bear 
her testimony against this "sum of all villanies;" to 
break out of this " league with death and covenant 
The Church Wltn neii «" The great Bishop Wilberforce 
blamed. exclaims with horror that " the Spirit of 

Missions, edited with the sanction of the Church, and 
under the eye of the Bishop of New York, proposes to 

1 Williams: History of the Negro Race in America, vol. ii. p. 99. 
This history, written by a negro, a member of the Ohio Legislature, is 
valuable in many regards. 



}• 



IN AVAR TIME. 363 

endow a mission school in Louisiana with a plantation 
to be worked by slaves." 1 Churchmen offered no pro- 
test when the Bishop of Georgia proposed to maintain 
the " Montpelier Institute " by slave labor, or when the 
Bishop of South Carolina denounced the "malignant 
philanthropy of abolition." With the Abolitionists as a 
party, the Church had but little sympathy. The intem- 
perance of their denunciations, their incapacity to under- 
stand the facts, their close affiliation with infidelity, 2 all 
offended her. Church people held rather with President 
Lincoln. They saw the evils of the institution, and 
looked for its abolition, but they saw also how closely it 
was interwoven with the structure of society, and were 
not ready for heroic surgery. 3 The Church preserved 
the same policy toward slavery that she has always done 
toward intemperance and poverty. They are evils to 
be eradicated by strengthening the constitutional life, 
rather than by the exhibition of specifics. 

The manner of life in the South was more familiar to 
her than it was to any other religious body. There 
M , . had been no separation or cessation of inter- 

Mutual com- L 

prehension, course. Every three years the representa- 
tives of all the dioceses sat together for weeks in 
General Convention. The bishops, North and South, 
were in constant correspondence, Meade with MTlvaine, 

* Wilberforce: History of the American Church, p. 427. 

The writer has but seldom referred to Bishop Wilberforce's History.. 
It is not of great value. It bears the mark of the haste with which it 
was prepared, and the scantiness of the authorities at its authors com- 
mand. See Life of Bishop Wilberforce, p. 87. 

2 Caswall: American Church and Union, p. 278. 

3 Nicolay and Hay: Life of Abraham Lincoln, in loc. 

8 Raymond: Life and State Papers of Abraham Lincoln, p. 759. 



I 



364 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Whittingham with Hopkins. 1 The Bishops of Virginia, 
Ohio, Tennessee, and Louisiana had kept the promise 
mutually given long before that they would pray for 
each other by name every Sunday morning. 2 Each 
section was fully aware of the others' sentiments. 
Northern Churchmen had often heard the Bishop of 
Virginia say, and in general they agreed with him, that 
slavery was never to his taste ; but that he had no 
conscientious scruples as to its lawfulness. 3 They 
knew that he had, like many others, emancipated 
slaves himself, only to find the poor creatures helpless 
vagabonds in the midst of a slave-holding commu- 
nity. 4 Indeed, manumission of individuals was a very 
doubtful kindness. When that sturdy Vermonter, 
Bishop Chase, went to live in New Orleans, he was 
compelled to purchase his negro Jack, because he could 
not obtain a servant in any other way. But having 
ended his residence there, he was at his wit's end to 
know what to do with Jack. 5 . Northern Churchmen 
knew that their brethren in the South were not alto- 
gether unmindful of the religious welfare of their slaves. 
They knew that in South Carolina there were a hundred 
and fifty congregations of negroes for a hundred of 
whites ; 6 that the Bishop of Virginia had preached his 
Convention Sermon upon the duty owed by the whites 
to negroes ; that thousands of them were regular and 
faithful communicants. 



i 



1 Johns : Life of Bishop Meade, p. 492. 

2 lb., p. 237. 
s lb., p. 476. 

4 Caswall : American Church and Union, p. 276. 

5 Chase: Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 75. 

6 Caswall: p. 273. 



m WAR TIME. 365 

All these things did not change their opinion of 
slavery. It was bad, only bad, and that continually. 
But this mutual understanding and sympathy kept the 
Church together while the Union lasted, and brought it 
together again as soon as that was restored. 

In 1860 it became evident that a slave-holding people 

and a free people would not live in the same house. 

Southern But when secession was first proposed it was 

bishops op- strenuously resisted by the leading Southern 

pose seces- < J J ° 

sion. bishops. The Bishop of Virginia used his 

great influence against it. 1 The Bishop of Maryland 

was still more outspoken, and remained steadfast to the 

Union through all. 2 In its defence he sacrificed the 

love of lifelong friends, and nearly broke his heart. 

Otey of Tennessee wrote to Bishop Polk, " It is God 

alone that can still the madness of the people. To 

what quarter shall we look when such men as you and 

Elliott deliberately favor secession ? What can we 

expect, other than violence among the masses, when 

the fathers of the land openly avow their determination 

to destroy the work which their fathers established at 

the expense of their blood ? " 3 

But when secession became a political fact, the 

Southern Churchmen maintained that it carried with it 

ecclesiastical separation. They contended that they 

had no choice. When the States in which they lived 

went out of the Union, they bore the Church with them 

1 Johns: Life of Bishop Meade, p. 492. "You see that I am almost 
in despair. I am told that our clergy in Charleston preach in favor of 
disunion. I fear some of our bishops consent, or why have I heard of no 
remonstraiice ? " 

2 Brand: Life of Bishop Whittingham, vol. ii. pp. 11, 20. 

3 Green : Life of Bishop Otey, p. 90. 



366 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



as really as a ship bears her company out to sea. To 
their minds the separation was as complete as though a 
\ Southern physical chasm had suddenly yawned between 

\k idea of the .i/l„ at .<i.i~ ~„j ±\~~ c< ,,-l-u i t>- i n_n_ 






); 



Chichwd the North and the South - 1 Bishops Polk 
the states. and Elliott say in a circular letter, " This 
necessity does not arise out of airy division which has 
occurred within the Church itself, nor from any dissat- 
isfaction with either the doctrine or discipline of the 
Church. We rejoice to record that we are to-day, as 
Churchmen, as truly brethren as we have ever been, and 
that no deed has been done, or word uttered, which leaves 
a single wound rankling in any breast." The Southern 
Churchmen had retained the original idea that the 
general Church was made by a voluntary compact of 
autonomous State Churches, long after that idea had 
faded out of mind in the North. Bishop Meade had 
not taken kindly to the General Missionary Societ} r , 
and had opposed the General Seminary for this very 
reason. They seemed to him to be movements toward 
a centralization which he believed to be contrary both 
to the spirit and the policy of the Church. 2 When the 
States seceded one by one, the Churches within them 
reverted to their primitive diocesan independence. 
No violent revolution in their ecclesiastical ideas was 
needed to bring them into harmony with their new 
situation. When the States confederated themselves 
into a new nation, it was the most natural thing for the 
dioceses to confederate themselves into a new Church 

i Wilmer: The Recent Past, p. 226. 

" As if an abyss had suddenly yawned between the two sections.'' 
2 Johns: Life of Bishop Meade, pp. 109, 504. 






IN WAR TIME. 367 

All their previous habits of thought made the way easy 
for them. 1 

When the General Convention met in New York in 

1862, the chasm had opened between the two sections, 

and war was already raging. The Southern 

dioceses were absent. What should the 

Church do in this new exigency? 

Once, long before, the delegates from a geographical 
section had been absent. A belt of yellow fever had 
cut off New England from the other States. At that 
time, the Church had accepted the physical explana- 
tion, and proceeded without the absent brethren. The 
same thing was done now. The Convention tacitly 
adopted the same theory which had controlled the 
action of the Southern dioceses. There was a physical 
obstacle in the way of their coming. But every day the 
roll of all the States was called. 2 The delegates might 
come and take their seats if they would or could. The 
possibility of any diocese being voluntarily absent was 
ignored. By the next triennial Convention they had re- 
turned. The General Convention continued to act as 
the representative of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the United States. The Nation did not acknowledge 
that any States had gone ; no more did the Church. 

But it was confronted with the question of what was 

its duty to the Nation in this its hour of 
The Church J 

and the need. The deliverance ot a body so mriu- 

Umon ' ential as the Episcopal Church would carry 

weight, and was anxiously looked for. It was given 

without hesitation in favor of the Union. A committee 

1 Green: Life of Bishop Otey, p. 121. 

2 General Convention Journal, 1862. 



J 



368 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

of nine was appointed to prepare a fitting declaration. 1 
When reported and adopted, after long and earnest dis- 
cussion, it set forth-: That obedience to civil authority 
is a Christian's duty and a Churchman's habit; that 
while the Convention had no hard words for its breth- 
ren in the South, it could not be blind to the fact that 
they were " in open and armed resistance to regularly 
constituted government ; " that as individual citizens 
the members of the Convention will not be found 
wanting in word or deed to aid the country in its 
struggle ; that as the council of a Church which hath 
ever renounced all political action, they can only pray 
that the National Government may be successful in this 
its rightful endeavor. 

A lay deputy from Maryland opposed the action, on 
the ground that a Church council may not concern itself 
in any way with political questions. The Presiding 
Bishop, Hopkins of Vermont, took the same position, 
and refused to read the Pastoral Letter which expressed 
the same general sentiment of patriotism. 2 These ob- 
jections were brushed aside. The issue was felt to be 
moral rather than political. Ecclesiastical precisians 
could not be heard upon it. The whole weight of the 
Church's influence, which was not small, was given to 
the Union side throughout the struggle. In the very 
darkest hour, when it became almost a matter of life or 
death to change the drift of English sympathy from the 
Southern to the Northern side, Bishop MTlvaine was 
one of the ambassadors at large to the English people, 

1 General Convention Journal, 1862. 

2 Brand: Life of Bishop Whittingham, vol. ii. p. 32. 



IN WAR TIME. 369 

chosen and informally accredited by President Lincoln. 
Together with Thurlow Weed, Henry Ward Beecher, and 
Archbishop Hughes, he went to England. He had enter- 
tained the Prince of Wales while visiting this country, 
and was well known among that class who most needed 
to be set right upon the true nature of the conflict. 
Few men effected more for the Union cause than did 
the Bishop of Ohio by this embassage. 1 

Meanwhile the absent dioceses had organized the 
Church in the Confederate States. 2 Its leaders were 
Polk, the Bishop of Louisiana, and Elliott, the Bishop 

of Georgia. The Bishop of Virginia was 
The Church & . i 

in the Con- with them now in sympathy, but he was old 

and near to die. In March of 1861 Polk and 
Elliott met at Sewannee, Tenn., on business connected 
with the University of the South. By that time South 
Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisi- 
ana, and Texas had seceded. The Church in each was 
an ecclesiastical fragment, floating in space. They were 
only more fortunate than the colonists had been at the 
close of the Revolution, in that they had diocesan or- 
ganizations and bishops. Some one must volunteer to 
lead them if they were to confederate. Polk and Elliott 
took up the task. They addressed a circular letter, ask- 
ing each seceded diocese to send delegates to a con- 
ference to be held at Montgomery, Ala., in July. In 
response to their call thirty delegates came. Four 
bishops were present, Elliott of Georgia, Green of 

1 Dyer: Records of an Active Life, p. 280. 

2 The material for this sketch of the Church in the Confederate States 
is chiefly taken from a monograph of that title by the Rev. Dr. John 
Fulton in Perry's History of the American Church, vol. ii. pp. 561-592. 



I 



370 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Mississippi, Rutledge of Florida, and Davis of South 
Carolina. Cobbs of Alabama had just died; Otey of 
i Tennessee was ill ; Meade of Virginia was old and 

\l infirm ; Atkinson of North Carolina did not respond ; 

Gregg of Texas was cut off by the blockade ; Polk had 
entered the Confederate Army. Six dioceses were rep- 
resented by clergy or laymen. All three orders sat in 
one House. There were no rules, in the nature of the 
case. The Convention was not a Church, but the 
material out of which one might be framed. They 
agreed that it was " necessary and expedient " that the 
dioceses of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 
seceded States should form among themselves an inde- 
pendent organization. It was urged that the eyes of 
the Confederacy were upon them, and that they owed 
the new government the moral support which they could 
give it by acting as if they expected it to be 
abiding. An ecclesiastical reason also pressed. 
Alabama was without a bishop. If it should elect a man 

(to that office, as was likely, who would take order for 
his consecration? The situation was difficult. The 
Convention was not large enough or representative 
enough to go forward to a complete organization ; it 
was too large and too conspicuous to go back and leave 
nothing done. They therefore took a recess until the 
following October, appointing a committee, of three of 
each order, to prepare a constitution and canons mean- 
while. When October came, all the States in the Con- 
federacy were represented save Texas, and all the 
bishops present except General Polk. Then they went 
forward and adopted the constitution and canons, sub* 



I 



IN WAR TIME. 371 

stantially the same as those they had been familiar with 
in the general Church, thus perfecting the Church in 
the Confederacy. The name of " Reformed Catholic " 
was proposed for the new organization, but failed of 
adoption. Following the guidance of existing facts, as 
the Conference in Maryland had done eighty years 
before, they called it the " Protestant Episcopal Church 
in the Confederate States of America." The Prayer- 
Book was changed by substituting Confederate States 
for United States throughout. 1 Arkansas, then a Mis- 
sionary Jurisdiction of the old Church, was admitted as 
a diocese in the new one. Shortly afterward Alabama 
elected Dr. R. H. Wilmer to be its bishop. This com- 
pelled the new Church to discharge the functions of a 
General Council. The consent of the several standing 
committees was secured, and the senior bishop in the 
Confederacy took order for his consecration. In all 
respects the new organization proceeded to act as a 
national Church. 

But in the daily life of its members it encountered 
grave difficulties. Apart from the hardships and priva- 
Confederate tions which arose from their territory being 

Federal au^ tne Seat °^ War ' tne * r i i tur g ica ^ worship 
thorities. brought them constantly into conflict with 
the Federal military authorities. Their Liturgy put 
into their mouths words of prayer for the Confederacy 
instead of for the United States and its President. Its 

1 Dr. Fulton calls attention to the curious fact that in the only edition 
of this Prayer-Book ever published (by Eyre and Spottiswoode, London), 
the words United States remained by an oversight in the Forms of Prayer 
to be Used at Sea. So that aboard the "Alabama " (if the company prayed 
at all) they must pray, " That we may be a safeguard to the United States 
of America, and a security for such as pass on the seas on their lawful 
occasions " ! 



\ 



372 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

use put them at a disadvantage as compared with the 
other Christian people in the Confederacy. The Romish 
Liturgy, being in a language not understanded of the 
people, and recognizing no ruler but the Pope, could be 
used in the United States or in the Confederacy or in 
the planet Jupiter with equal fitness. Non-Liturgical 
clergymen could avoid words of constructive treason by 
any periphrases they chose. If their petitions were 
only intelligible by God, they need not offend any 
earthly authority. But Churchmen were in an evil 
case. If they held public worship at all, they must 
offend. To use the prayers for the rulers or to omit 
them was equally dangerous. In 1862 General Butler 
issued an order that " the omission, in the service of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in New Orleans, of 
the Prayers for the President of the United States, 
would be regarded as evidence of hostility to the Gov- 
ernment of the United States." In a lengthy 

General m . ° 

Butler as a correspondence which ensued, the general un- 

(dertook to show the clergy what the Canon 
Law required in the premises. His canonical knowl- 
edge was equal to his military skill. But the discussion 
was terminated by the forcible closure of the churches. 
The rectors were arrested and sent North as military 
prisoners, but upon their arrival at New York were at 
I once set at liberty. Similar conflicts were constantly 

occurring as the Federal forces gained control of more 
and more territory. Dr. Wingfield of Portsmouth, Va., 
was condemned to the chain-gang for a similar offence. 
Dr. Smith of Alexandria was arrested in his chancel 
for refusing to use the Prayer for the President of the 



I 



IN WAR TIME. 373 

United States at the command of a military officer who 
was present. 1 General Woods inhibited the Bishop and 
all the clergy of Alabama. For a time, the churches in 
that State were closed, and armed guards stationed at 
the doors to keep them from being opened. 2 The Bishop 
was followed to his retreat by an officer instructed to 
see that he should pray for the President of the United 
States. One of his clergy consented to use the prayer 
for the President, but " under protest ! " 3 A letter 
from the Bishop to President Lincoln produced an 
immediate revocation of the obnoxious order. Such 
instances might be multiplied indefinitely. The Church 
in the South had set itself in antagonism to the United 
States by the very fact of its existence. Its raison 
d'etre was the assumption that certain States had 
actually withdrawn from the Union. From the North- 
ern point of view, they not only had not gone 
Confederate out, but by attempting to do so they had 
committed a flagrant offence. The Church 
became particeps criminis in the offence. Its Liturgy 
made it impossible for it to evade the consequences of 
its original act of organization. The only final justifica- 
tion of revolution is success. In this case success was 
wanting. In its absence, all concerned in the attempt 
bore their share of the awful cost of failure. None bore 
it with a better grace or a more patient dignity than the 
short-lived Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confed- 
erate States. 

i Slaughter: Memorial of the Rev. George Archibald Smith, p. 41. 

2 Wilmer: The Recent Past, p. 146. 

3 The Bishop, very properly, wonders what would he the precise effect 
of such a prayer ? 



374 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



) 



i 



} 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE REUNITED CHURCH. 

In the spring of 1865 the Confederacy ceased to be. 
With its dissolution the reason for the Southern Church 
passed away. Their contention from the first had been 
that, being cut off from the United States by no act of 
their own, the dioceses in the seceded States simply 
conformed to existing facts in organizing a new church. 
Now, on their own principles, their Church's place 
was gone. Their Prayer-Book was obsolete. There 
was no longer any " President of the Confederate 
States " to pray for if they had wished it. But it was 
not so clear that they had been borne back involunta- 
rily into the Protestant Episcopal Church by the reflux 
of the tide. They might not be willing to resume their 
long vacant places ; the Church might not be willing to 
receive them. They had gone out because a political 
chasm separated the two sections. That gulf 

Moving 

toward was now closed, but not until it had been 

reunion. filled with human bloocL Fortunately old 

friendships still held. The Presiding Bishop, Hopkins 
of Vermont, and Bishop Elliott of Georgia, the leader in 
the Southern Church, were more than brethren. Their 
old affection for each other was unbroken. Elliott 
clearly discerned the situation. " We appealed," lie 
said, " to the God of battles, and He has given His 






THE REUNITED CHURCH. 375 

decision against us. We accept the result as the work, 
not of man, but of God." x In this temper he was ready 
to work for peace and unity. But all were not of his 
mind. Chagrin, humiliation, apprehension, and anger 
were common among his people. The unhappy " recon- 
struction " period had set in. Military governors were 
still in occupation of the late seceded States. Bishop 
Hopkins, with the knowledge and consent of his breth- 
ren, sent a circular letter to all the Southern Bishops, 
assuring them of a welcome if they would take their 
places in the approaching General Convention in Octo- 
ber. Bishop Wilmer of Alabama expressed the senti- 
ment both of his own State and Mississippi 2 when he 
replied that it was by no means clear as yet that the 
Southern dioceses might not retain their separate posi- 
Obstacles in ^ on ' tna ^ wou -ld depend upon circumstances 
the way. no ^ y e t determined ; 3 that they could not 
come back as supplicants for pardon ; that human pas- 
sions were facts which must be taken account of ; that 
the best men in the South were yet under the ban as 
traitors; that their representative man might yet be 
hanged ; that all would depend upon the spirit shown by 
the General Convention itself when it should meet ; that 
they could abide the result of the war, but could not 
yet join in Te Dewns over their own defeat. 

Apart from the sore temper on the one hand, and the 
triumphant one on the other, there were grave difficul- 
ties to be adjusted. The Bishop of Alabama had been 

i Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 339. 
2 Wilmer: The Recent Past, p. 166. 
s lb., p. 155. 



376 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

elected and consecrated outside of the Church's rules. 
Arkansas had been taken from the missionary jurisdic- 
tion of the Southwest, and erected into a diocese. 
\w Worst of all, Bishop Polk of Louisiana had broken 

Catholic rule and violated Christian sentiment by tak- 
ing arms. But his name was dear in the 
is op o . g ou ^ 1> j^ g rac [ ua te of West Point, he had 
been almost forced into command at a time when com- 
petent leaders were hard to find. He had assumed the 
duty most reluctantly. 1 But he was urged on every 
hand. Even the old Bishop of Virginia had called to 
his mind, when he hesitated, that " the conduct of 
Phinehas was so praiseworthy that the inspired David 
says it was accounted to him for righteousness through 
all posterities for evermore ; and did not Samuel, the 
minister of God from his infancy, lead forth the hosts 
of Israel to battle, and with his own hand slay the king 
of Amalek ? " 2 He had taken up the sword against his 
will, and sought in vain to be allowed to lay it down. 3 
At Pine Mountain he had fallen, and his blood had 
discolored the Prayer-Book in his pocket, and half 
washed out of it the names, written by his own hand, 
of his three friends, Johnson, Hood, and Hardee. 4 Any 
suggestion of censure upon the conduct of the dead 
could not be borne. 

All these things made the Southern people hesitate. 
They needed not to have done so. When the General 
Convention met at Philadelphia in October, 1865, the 



i 



3 Fulton, in Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 581. 
2 Green: Life of Bishop Otey, p. 96. 

« lb., p. 100. 

4 Fulton, in Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 583. 



THE REUNITED CHURCH. 377 

clerk of the House of Deputies began with " Alabama " 

in calling the roll of dioceses. The roll had never been 

changed. Alabama and the other Confed- 

General Con- ° 

vsntionof erate States had only been absent from one 
meeting, and their names had never been re- 
moved. To the general gratification of all, two South- 
ern bishops, Atkinson of North Carolina, and Lay of 
Arkansas, were present at the opening service. They 
came, doubting both their right and their welcome. 1 
They were hospitably entreated and constrained to 
take their places. The Convention acted on the dreaded 
questions with good-sense and generosity. It was re- 
solved that the Bishop of Alabama should be received 
upon signing the ordinary declaration of conformity. 2 
No question was raised about the regularity of his con- 
secration. The case of Arkansas had settled itself. 
Its short life as a diocese had been destroyed by the 
ravages of war. The Church within it was practically 
extinct. Bishop Lay had been all the while, in spite of 
himself, the missionary bishop of the Southwest. In 
that capacity his place was still open. The career of 
Bishop Polk was not referred to. He was dead. But 
the harmony came near being destroyed by an un- 
expected means. The House of Bishops proposed a 
thanksgiving service for "the restoration of peace and 
Reunion the re-establishment of the National Govern- 

imperiiied. ment over foe whole land." The Bishop of 
North Carolina protested that his people could not say 
that. They acquiesced in the result of the war, and 

i Harrison : Life of Bishop Kerfoot, vol. ii. p. 391. 
2 General Convention Journal, 1865. 



I 



378 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

would accommodate themselves to it like good citizens ; 
but they were not thankful. They had prayed that the 
issue might have been different. They were ready to 
\k " return thanks for peace to the country, and unity to 

the Church; " but that was a different matter. Bishop 
Stevens of Pennsylvania moved to substitute the South- 
ern man's words for the ones in the resolution offered. 
His motion was carried by sixteen to seven. 1 When 
the amended resolution was offered in the House of 
Deputies, Horace Binney of Pennsylvania moved to 

restore the original phrase giving thanks 
Binney's " for the re-establishment of the National 

Government over the whole land," and to 
add to it " and for the removal of the great occasion of 
national dissension and estrangement to which our late 
troubles were due " (referring to slavery). 2 A storm 
of discussion at once arose, both within and without the 
Convention. The secular press of the country took up 
the matter; declared that the loyalty of the Church 

(itself was upon trial ; that it dare not refuse to pass Mr. 
Binney's patriotic resolution; that too much tenderness 
had already been shown to " unreconstructed rebels." 
Dr. Kerfoot, President of Trinity College, came to the 
rescue. 3 He had been, all through the war, a Union man 
in a place where his loyalty had cost him some tiling. 
His college in Maryland had been well-nigh destroyed. 
He had tended the wounded at Antietam and South 
Mountain, battles fought at his very door. He had 

1 Perry: History, vol. ii. p. 592. 

2 General Convention Journal, 18(55. 
8 Harrison: Life of Bishop Kerfoot, vol. ii. p. 393, et seq. 



THE REUNITED CHURCH. 379 

been seized a prisoner by General Early's order. His 
goods had been destroyed by the Confederate soldiery. 
He, if any one, had the right to speak. His own loyalty 
was beyond all question. He begged the Convention 
Dr. Kerfoot's to remember that it had itself invited and 
plea. urged the Southern delegates to come ; that 

the place to celebrate the triumph of the Northern arms 
was outside of the Church ; that not only the present 
but the future peace of the Church was at stake ; that 
if the Church should be led by its passions now, future 
unity would be impossible ; that " their thanksgiving 
for unity and peace should ascend to the throne of God 
in such a form that all could honestly join in it." 

His wise and earnest argument prevailed. By a vote 

of twenty dioceses to six, Mr. Binney's amendment was 

defeated, 1 and the House of Bishops' more generous 

terms were carried. This action settled the 

Reunion. 

question of reunion. The Southern Church 

met once more at Augusta, closed out its affairs 
decently, and was no more. 

The Protestant Episcopal Church in its integrity 
entered upon its modern life in an. undivided nation. 
The generation now living had come upon the stage. 
But the war had done far more than to settle a political 
dispute. It had profoundly changed the conditions of 
American life. It introduced four millions of manu- 
mitted slaves to a new social, political, religious exist- 
ence. The old methods of the Church for them were no 
longer applicable. The awful problem pressed to find 

1 General Convention Journal, 1865. 

1 Brand: Life of Bishop Wbittingham, vol, ii. p. 74. 



380 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

new and efficient ones. The war had done much to 
break up sectarian isolation. When young men who 
had been taught in their country homes that 
U effects of the Romanism was pure abomination, had been 

war - gently nursed by Sisters of Charity in the 

military hospital, their prejudices were greatly shaken. 
When Churchmen had their wounds bound up and heard 
extemporaneous prayers offered at their side by Meth- 
odist and Presbyterian chaplains and Christian Com- 
mission agents, they changed their thought about the 
validity of a ministry which bore such fruits. When 
these in turn heard Churchmen openly recite the Creed 
and say their prayers, they were arrested and impressed. 
The end of the war was followed by a period of restless 
moving to and fro. Soldiers had learned to travel. 
They brought back with them to their quiet homes a 
broader habit of mind and a quickened consciousness of 
national life. The}?- brought a wider thought to the 
congregations where they worshipped. A ferment was 

(working in every province of life. It could be seen in 
commerce, art, and social habit. Religion felt it also. 

The Church was in the presence of a new set of facts' 
and forces. To understand them would require of her 
judgment and a sound mind, the spirit of wisdom and 
ghostly strength. The Doctrine of Evolution, just 
coming into notice, was to change her whole way of 
New forces regarding life and man. The teaching of 
and new Robertson, Maurice, and the author of " Ecce 

problems. 

Homo," with the new method in History and 

Criticism, was to become a solvent of many of her ac- 
cepted dogmas. The revived movement of population 



i 






THE REUNITED CHURCH. 381 

westward was to tax her missionary spirit to its utmost. 
Her great work among the Indians in the Northwest, 
already begun, was to be carried to completion. She 
was to plant a church in Hayti, and to aid and foster 
one in Mexico. The wisdom and energy needed to 
adjust herself to the changed conditions of life was to 
be drawn off for a period into the long, dreary, barren 
contest over Ritual. The amazing spectacle of grave 
and learned theologians and jurists endeavoring to per- 
form modistes' and dancing masters' 1 work was to be 
displayed before the astonished eyes of- an earnest gener- 
ation which had just fought a mighty war over ques- 
tions of the first rank. Bishop Cummins and his 
following of restless spirits were to add a superfluous 
sect to the divisions of Christendom. The Church 
Congress was to give outlet to surcharged thought, 
and to bring men to a better knowledge of each other's 
spirit. The "Church Idea" was to be infused into 
American Protestantism. The task of the memorial- 
ists was to be taken up again, and the Liturgy revised 
to fit the exigencies of common life. The idea of a 
mechanical uniformity was to be unconsciously for- 
saken. The Episcopate was to break from its tram- 
mels, and proclaim to the divided Christian world the 
Church's hope and plan for Unity. 

1 A committee of five bishops, among the greatest in learning and 
character, deliberated and reported concerning the washing of the 
priest's hands, bowings, genuflections, reverences, bowing down upon or 
kissing the holy table; a surplice reaching to the ankles for choristers; 
a surplice not reaching below the ankle for priests; stoles, bands, black 
gowns, and university caps. General Convention Journal, 1871. 



382 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



/ 



h CHAPTEE XIII. 

\ DOCTRINE AND CEREMONIAL. 

While statesmen and politicians were busy over the 
problem of "Reconstruction," ecclesiastics and Church 
conventions were busy with the " Ritual Controversy." 
This term, which we use as convenient because it has 
been so generally applied to the question at issue, is, 
indeed, misleading. It is inconceivable that devout 
and earnest Christians and Churchmen should have 
thought worth while to argue, denounce, struggle, 
manoeuvre, and pray for or against a little more or less 
of elaborate form in the conduct of the public worship 
of God. The contestants on both sides were always 
careful to declare that they regarded "Ritual," in 

! itself considered, as of very subordinate moment. 

What, then, was at issue ? What saved a controversy 
which was waged so furiously for a decade, and which 
divides men's opinions to-day, from being laughed off 
the stage? Men do not long continue to be inter- 
ested in paltry things. Should the Christian Minister 
be called a priest or a presbyter? Should the Holy 
Table be called a table or an altar ? Should the offici- 
The worth of ating Minister wear a surplice or a black 
ritual. gown? Should candles be permitted to burn 

by daylight on or about the altar? Should flowers be 
allowed in the chancel or about the font? Should 



DOCTRINE AND CEREMONIAL. dod 

anthems be sung or said ? These things, in themselves, 
are allowed to be of no more consequence than the 
color of a cockade. But, then, the color of a cockade 
has more than once in the world's history sufficed to in- 
flame a nation. The rival hues of the red and the white 
rose have served to keep a kingdom at war for genera- 
tions. What was at issue in the Ritual Controversy ? 
At bottom it was a local phase of that division which 
is as old as the history of Religion between the Prophet 
and the Priest. The Sons of Levi and the Sons of the 
Prophets have ever had a different thought concerning 
God's ways with men. Only under the pressure of a 
common peril from the outside do Iddo the Seer and 
Jeshua the son of Johzadek work together for the build- 
ing of God's house. For more than two centuries the 
Protestant doctrine of " Justification by Faith alone " 
had remained unchallenged in the Church of England. 
Even the Non-jurorc, and the American Churchman 
of the Seabury and Hobart type, had affirmed it as 
strenuously as had the Evangelicals. Their reverence 
for the Sacraments and for the Church's ways was due 
rather to their love of order and prescription than to 
any belief that salvation was attained through sacro- 
sanct observances. 

But a generation had now grown up within the in- 
fluence of the Catholic Revival. The very essence of the 
Oxford Movement was that it claimed for the Church 
as a divine institution a necessary place and function 
in the salvation of the individual. The Church, it 
asserted, is not a society into which men come after 
they have become Christians, and in which they 



384 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

remain because they are Christians, but is the divinely 
ordained instrument by which men are made Chris- 
The Church tians, and its sacraments and ordinances are 
L idea " the means by which their spiritual life is 

kept from perishing. To those thus persuaded every- 
thing connected with the Church takes on a new value 
and significance. It is not enough for them that public 
service shall be conducted decently and with decorum. 
The high and dry propriety in a Connecticut parish 
church was little less offensive than the pietistic free- 
dom of an Ohio prayer meeting. What they desired 
*was that in everything connected with the Church 
its supernatural quality should be manifest. The 
peculiarity of architecture, the bearing of the wor- 
shippers, the dress of the officiant, the arrangement of 
furniture, lights, flowers, incense, music, gesture, tone, 
all these should conform to and show forth the central 
thought of the Church as the peculiar dwelling place of 
God on earth. Ritual was the attempt to express this. 
Few were clear-sighted enough to discern precisely 
what was desired or what was threatened, but still fewer 
were uninfluenced by the movement going forward. 

The movement also fell in and marched with a far 
wider change which had begun to show itself in every 
department of life among the people. During the 
Civil War more than three millions of men had learned 
to wear uniform and to keep step. Civil and military 
display had grown familiar. Insignia of rank, badges 
of office, rhythm of procession, flags and banners as 
symbols of organization, things from which the repub- 
lican prejudice of ante helium days had turned away, 



'l 



DOCTKINE AND CEREMONIAL. 385 

had now come in. Civil and military ritual are closely 

related to ecclesiastic. Agitation for cap and gown set 

in in colleges and universities. Uniforms began to be 

worn in boys' schools, and by the employees 
Civic ritual. J ' -.,.,, 

oi railways and steamboats, and, a little later 

on, by the employees of great private firms. A sug- 
gestion of similar customs twenty years earlier would 
have been met with ridicule or indignation. The fact 
was that the whole nation was growing ritualistic. It 
was too much to expect, even if one wished it, that the 
Church should remain uninfluenced. 

But the movement within the Church was opposed 
with a bitterness and intensity of zeal which it is, 
happily, difficult to realize now. Evangelicals opposed 
it because it sprang from a conception of the Church 
and a rationale of Sacraments which was, to their 
minds, radically false and practically perilous. High 
Anglicans withstood it because it disturbed the conven- 
tional order of the Ecclesiastical household. Conser- 
vative Churchmen withstood it because it introduced 
novelties, and to not a few minds novel truth is no less 
obnoxious than novel error. Romanists flouted it as a 
clumsy aping of manners which were to them, being 
to the manner born, fit and reasonable. Protestants 
pointed to it with a real or affected horror, and saw in 
it Episcopacy marching to its logical end. Wits jested 
at it; theologians argued against it; canonists thun- 
dered at it; bishops charged anent it; foolish priests 
made it ridiculous by their extravagances; and, mean- 
while, ritualism steadily advanced. 1 No environment 

1 Church Journal, 1867, p. 140. 







386 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

was safe. It spread in New York; it invaded Penn- 
sylvania; it appeared in Yermont; it broke out spo- 
radically in Ohio; even the dry air of Connecticut was 
\| not fatal to it. No controversy in the whole history of 

the American Church has caused such an intensity of 
feeling. For a time it seemed as if no refuge could be 
found anywhere from the strife of tongues. Brotherly 
kindness and even Christian Charity seemed to have 
disappeared. There is little to choose between the 
methods and temper of its advocates and opponents. 
The former were filled with the new wine of revived 
ecclesiasticism, and the latter were alarmed at the break- 
ing up of old customs and dismayed at the presence, in 
the air, of a spirit which they did not comprehend. 
The contention of the so-called ritualists was, from the 
. first, that they were acting within the law of 

ists' conten- the Church when introducing those acts and 
tion. methods which were denounced as innova- 

tions. Such a contention appeared simply preposterous 
(to old-fashioned Churchmen. When the ritualist went 
farther and accused them of being themselves habitual 
law-breakers, they honestly thought that midsummer 
madness could go no farther. There were two ques- 
tions concerning acts of ritual: Were they in themselves 
fitting and desirable ? Were they permissible by the 
law of the Church? The ritualists labored to prove 
the first; their opponents labored to disprove the sec- 
ond. At first it seemed hardly worth while to dis- 
prove it. Could any sane man believe that these things 
were legal in the American Church — lights on the 
altar, alb, chasuble, dalmatic, and such like, and of 

'i 



DOCTRINE AND CEREMONIAL. 887 

variegated colors; bowings and crossings, the burning 
of incense, the chrism in Confirmation, the mixed 
chalice and wafer bread? In 1866 the venerable Dr. 
Hopkins, Bishop of Vermont, and Presiding Bishop, 
was moved to take up his parable concerning the mat- 
ter. In October of that year he issued his book, " The 
Law of Ritual, ' ' which in three months ran through 
Bishop Hop- three editions. Bishop Hopkins was a law- 
kins's book. ver anc i a theologian, a man of unquestioned 
candor and courage, and of exceptional personal char- 
acter.- That he was something of a doctrinaire was 
rather an advantage than otherwise in enabling him 
to pass judgment on a burning question in a time of 
excitement. 

The effect of his book upon the Church at large was 
much that of Balaam's prophesying upon the Moa bites. 
" For Balak said unto Balaam, What hast thou done 
unto me? I took thee to curse mine enemies, and 
behold thou hast blessed them altogether." He had 
conceded the whole case. The law of the Church 
being what it was — that is, the Canon Law of the Church 
of England, except upon such points as that law had 
been specifically set aside or modified — all the disputed 
points were lawful. 

If the situation were as the presiding bishop declared 
it to be, the opponents of ritualism were left but two 
things to do. 1 They might either organize the public 

1 " The appearance of the Bishop of Vermont's little book is a serious 
thing, as it opens the door for experiments which are not unlikely to be 
made in respectable churches, if not in some of the most important seats 
of the Church's dignity and strength ! " — Letter to a Bishop, Arthur 
Cleaveland Coxe, 1866. 






388 THE PK0TESTA1NT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

opinion of the Church so strongly against the incom- 
ing movement as to stop it and turn it back; or they 
might have the law of the Church so changed as to put an 
end to it by penalties. They essayed to do both in turn. 
In October, 1866, the House of Bishops met in New 
York for certain special business. The question of 
Ritualism was discussed at length, and a Committee 
was appointed to propose a Declaration upon the sub- 
ject. The moving spirit, and the Secretary of the 
Committee, was the Bishop of Western New York. It 
seems to have been hoped by the Bishops that a formal 

I expression of opinion by them could be weighty enough 

to stop a movement which they disapproved, but which 
each in his own diocese was not bold enough to con- 
front officially. This hope, to which that House has 
fondly clung at many junctures, failed here as always. 
Their hesitation betrayed itself in the very tenor of 
The Bishops' ^ ne Declaration. In its preamble they dis- 
Deciaration. avowed official character for their action. 
" Whereas, at a meeting of the House of Bishops held 
in the month of October the subject of ritualism was 
brought to the notice of the House and considered with 
great unanimity, and 

Whereas, on account of the absence of a number of 
the Right Rev. members of the House, and the fact 
that the House was not sitting as a coordinate branch 
of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in the United States of America, it was re- 
garded as inexpedient to proceed to any formal action, 
and 

Whereas, it was nevertheless regarded as highly 



DOCTKINE AND CEKEMONIAL. 389 

desirable that an expression of opinion on the part of 
the Episcopate of this Church should be given in respect 
to ritualistic innovations; Therefore the . undersigned 
Bishops, reserving each for himself his right as Ordi- 
nary of his own Diocese ... do unite in the fol- 
lowing Declaration. ' ' 1 

The Declaration, which is lengthy, consists of an 
argument, a conclusion, and an instance. The argu- 
ment is that every national Church has the power to 
decree finally, and without reference to any other 
national Church, everything which pertains to its own 
Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship; that this Church 
has done so, Avith the result that the ceremonies, rites, 
and worship thns established, ordained, and set forth in 
the Book of Common Prayer are the sole law of this 
Church. The conclusion, rather hinted at than ex- 
pressed, is that no rite, fashion, ceremony, or position 
not specifically commanded by rubric is lawful. The 
instances noted of such illegal innovations are : " The 
use of incense, and the burning of lights in the order 
of the Holy Communion ; reverences to the Holy Table 
or to the Elements placed thereon; the adoption of 
clerical habits hitherto unknown." Finally, as a tub 
to a whale, was appended the notification that, "we 

1 The signers were Smith of Kentucky, Mellvaine and Bedell of Ohio, 
Kemper of Wisconsin, McCoskrey of Michigan, Lee of Delaware, Johns of 
Virginia, Eastburn of Massachusetts, Chase of New Hampshire, Upfold of 
Indiana, Payne of Africa, Williams of Connecticut, Davis of South Caro- 
lina, Kip of Calif ornia, Lee of Iowa, Clark of Rhode Island, Whipple of 
Minnesota, Talbot of Indiana, Wilmer of Alabama, Vail of Kansas, Coxe 
of Western New York, Clarkson of Nebraska, Randall of Colorado, Ker- 
foot of Pittsburg, Williams of China, Cumins of Kentucky, Armitage of 
Wisconsin. 



390 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

include in these censures all departures from the laws, 
rubrics and settled order of the Church by defect as 
well as by excess of observance.'' It was presently 
\ seen that the Declaration was but a hrutum fulmen. 

Its premises were not historically defensible ; its con- 
clusion was inconsequential; its instances were badly 
chosen. In any case the people against whom it was 
addressed were neither in the mood nor of the temper 
to be influenced by the unsolicited advice of a score of 
individual Bishops, some of whom they regarded as 
indoctus, some as time-serving, and some as malignant. 
If Ritualism could be stayed it could only be by ex- 
press statute in that case made and provided. Advice, 
counsel, remonstrance were of no avail. Still less 
where it was evident to all that the counsellors were 
almost without exception men who had themselves been 
carried more or less from their old positions, and, having 
fetched up at various points of advance, demanded that 
every one else should stand at the precise point where 
he had come to rest. 

In the General Convention of 1868 a Committee of 
five Bishops 1 was appointed to consider and report to 
The Ritual the next Convention ' ' Whether any addi- 
Commission. tional provision for Uniformity by canon 
or otherwise is practicable and expedient." When the 
next General Convention met in Baltimore in 1871, this 
committee reported to the House of Bishops that in their 
judgment such legislation was not only practicable and 
expedient, but was imperatively and immediately neces- 
sary. ' ' Unless something is done, and done soon, in the 

1 Bishops Lee of Delaware, Williams, Clark, Odenheimer, Kerfoot. 



I 



i 



! 



DOCTRINE AND CEREMONIAL. 391 

interest of uniformity the diversities of use now obtain- 
ing bid fair to equal if they do not exceed those which 
at the period of the Anglican Reformation were re- 
garded as an evil to be removed. They occasion con- 
fusion, trouble and perplexity, among our people, and 
these evils must increase as their causes are multiplied. " 
They recommend, therefore, 1 that the following things 
shall be expressly prohibited by canon: the use of 
incense ; a crucifix in any part of the Church ; carrying 
a cross in procession in the Church; the use of orna- 
Thingsfor- mental lights on the altar; the elevation of 
bidden. the elements in the Holy Communion; the 

mixed chalice; ablutions of the priest's hands or of 
the vessels in the presence of the congregation ; bow- 
ings, crossings, genuflections, reverences; bowing down 
before or kissing the Holy Table; celebration of the 
Holy Communion by bishop or priest alone ; choral ser- 
vice without the consent of the vestry or contra^ to 
the prohibition of the Bishop; the wearing of a sur- 
plice which does not reach down to the ankles by any 
chorister. They recommend, farther, that canonical 
provision be made touching the dress of ministers offi- 
ciating in the congregation, to the effect that the only 
lawful, official dress shall be, for the bishop, the present 
episcopal robes, for all ministers a white surplice, a 
black or white stole, a black cassock not reaching below 
the ankles, a black gown, and bands, and that when 
expediency or health demands it, the university cap may 
be used. When the report was presented the House of 
Bishops resolved that, " in view of the gravity of the 

1 Gen. Con. Journal. 1871, p. 599. 



392 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

subject," they were not prepared to act upon it with- 
out it being first considered by a joint Committee of the 
two houses, and asked that a Committee of the House 
\ of Deputies should be appointed by ballot for that pur- 

pose. 1 The Joint Committee thus asked for was cre- 
ated, with Bishop Whittingham of Maryland at the 
head of the Bishops, and Dr. Mead of Connecticut at 
the head of the Deputies. During a debate which 
extended over two weeks the specific list of " innova- 
tions " which the Committee of Bishops had advised to 
be prohibited dropped out of sight. Their original 
recommendations were definitely brought to a vote in 
the House of Deputies, under the leadership of Dr. 
Mead of Connecticut and Dr. Goodwin of Pennsylva- 
nia, and were defeated by a small but sufficient major- 
ity. Their defeat was due to the memorable words 
spoken at the last moment of the debate by the Rev. 
James de Koven of Wisconsin. His utterance simply 
made any repressive canon about ritual impossible with- 
out rending the Church. It had been falsely assumed 
all along that the question at issue was one of ceremo- 
Dr. de Koven's n ^5 whereas, in fact, it was one of doctrine, 
challenge. « < The objection which I have to this canon 
or any other like it," said Dr. de Koven, "is that it 
bears upon (disputed) doctrine, and seems to settle it in 
one direction. Now, questions of doctrine should not 
be settled by any canon which does not bear directly 
upon doctrine. If people teach false doctrine they 
should be tried and punished according to that canon. 
I wish now to give any in this house the opportunity 

1 Gen. Con. Journal, 1871, p. 267. 



) 






DOCTRINE AND CEREMONIAL. 393 

to present me for false doctrine if he wishes, and in 
order to do so I will use language which I will explain 
presently. I believe in ' the real actual presence of our 
Lord under the form of Bread and Wine upon our 
altars. I myself adore, and if necessary or my duty, 
teach my people to adore Christ present in the elements 
under the form of bread and wine. ' I use these words 
because they are a bald statement of the Real Presence. 
But I use them for another reason; they are adjudi- 
cated words. They are words which, used by a divine 
of the Church of England, have been tried in the 
highest ecclesiastical court of England, and have been 
decided by that court to come within the limits of the 
truth allowed in the Church of England. Sir Robert 
Philemore has decided that if he should pronounce 
these words wrong he should be passing judgement, he 
should be passing sentence, upon a long roll of illus- 
trious divines who have adorned our universities and 
fought the good fight of our Church, from Ridley to 
Keble, from the divine whom the cross at Oxford com- 
memorates to the divine in whose honor that University 
has just finished her last College." 

There was nothing more to be said. If holding and 
teaching the doctrine was unlawful, then common man- 
liness and honor demanded the presentment of Dr. de 
Koven, and those who agreed with him, for heresy. 
If the doctrine was permissible, then the ceremonial 
that symbolized it was, a fortiori, permissible. The 
question at issue was the comprehensiveness of the 
Church. Was it broad enough to contain within it the 
priest and the prophet ? At that time the priest asked 



394 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

only for standing ground and living room. He did not 

dream of controlling the organization or of denouncing 

the prophet for looseness of doctrine. He 

The Church's , . . 

i comprehen- won his victory because he had the logic 

siveness. Qn j^ g g .^ an( ^ ^j^ wag Q f more con . 

sequence, he saved the Church from herself. 

The House of Bishops and the champions of Protes- 
tantism in the lower house were let down easy by the 
practically unanimous adoption of a vague resolution 
that, " This Convention hereby expresses its decided 
condemnation of all ceremonies, observances and prac- 
tices which are fitted to express a doctrine foreign to 
the authorized standards of the Church." The ritual 
controversy was ended. A new lot of pamphlets and 
editorial articles were harvested and added to the pile 
of the same sort 1 of literature which previous years 
had produced, and have been forgotten altogether. 
Ceremonial which had its root in sentimentalism or 
aesthetics died a natural death. The sense of humor 
among Americans is too strong to allow that sort of 
folly to endure. But the Church had vindicated once 
The end of again her comprehensiveness. There is a 
controversy. pi ace w ithin her for those who hold to the 
sacramental theory of the Ministry and the supernat- 
ural theory of the Sacraments. They are at liberty to 
teach and to symbolize their belief, provided they do 
not denounce or try to proscribe their more numerous 



i 



brethren who do not agree with them. 

1 I have not thought it well to accumulate references or footnotes to 
that mass of controversial literature concerning "Ritualism" which was 
produced between 1865 and 1875. Neither its temper nor its intrinsic value 
was fitted to save it from the oblivion into which it has properly fallen. 



PEACE WITH HONOR. 395 



CHAPTER XIY. 

PEACE WITH HONOR. 

When the General Convention had, by its action in 
1871, tacitly affirmed the Church's comprehensiveness 
there came a moment of doubt and hesitation on the 
part of some who had hoped and expected a different 
issue. High Churchmen who had strenuously opposed 
Ritualism because it threatened confusion to existing 
order found little difficulty in the situation. They 
had opposed certain innovations because they believed 
them to be contrary to law. When it appeared that 
the law was not quite what they had believed it to be 
their very instinct of legality led them to acquiesce. 
They loved ritualism, none the more, but the Church 
having, albeit grudgingly, pronounced its right to be, 
they would obey the Church. 1 While they did not like 
either the theory of the Church or the rationale of the 
Sacraments, which it symbolized, they liked still less 
those of the other extreme. But there were not a few 
who thought that they never could be reconciled to the 
situation. Not only was the Church in danger, but 
Evangelical tne truth of God was jeopardized. Justifi- 
perpiexity. cation by faith, the artioulus stantis vel ca- 
dendis ecclesice, was passing out of sight, or only found 
hearty expression in the Protestant Churches. Those 

1 Brand : Life of Bishop Wittingham, vol. ii. ch. 7. 
1 Harrison : Life of Bishop Kerfoot, vol. ii. p. 529. 



896 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

of this way of thinking had long desired that on that 
side of the Church where her frontier marches with 
Protestantism, the line of delimitation should be drawn 
\\ as vaguely as might be, When Dr. Hubbard preached 

in a Baptist meeting house in Westerly, R. I., and the 
younger Dr. Stephen Tyng invaded the ecclesiastical 
territory of the Rev. Messrs. Stubbs and Boggs to 
preach in a Methodist Church in New Jersey, the action 
was characterized as liberality and church fellowship. 
They did not believe that any legitimate frontier had 
been trespassed upon because they did not believe that 
there actually was any frontier — on that side. But now, 
when it became evident that there were those in the 
Church who desired equal liberty in precisely the oppo- 
site direction, they were filled with anxiety. This anxi- 
ety deepened into real alarm when it began to appear 
that the law of the Church as it stood was likely to be 
enforced with much more rigor against those guilty 
of "fault by defect of ritual observance" than those 
from excess. The temper of the whole Church was 
bad. Charity and magnanimity were sadly wanting. 
A pestilent band of partisan journals misnamed " relig- 
ious " newspapers were doing their best, not in the in- 
terest of truth, but of party advantage. The " Church 
Journal ' ' and the ' ' Protestant Churchman ' ' and the 
" Standard of the Cross " were doing their worst to egg 
their several parties to mutual proscription. The Low 
Churchman had reason to be afraid. Like the Ritual- 
ists, they had been in the habit of finding relief for 
their consciences in divigations from the letter of the 
rubrics. It began to look as if they would be estopped 






PEACE WITH HONOR. 397 

from this, and at the point where they were most sen- 
sitive. In 1868 the Kev. Charles E. Cheney of Chicago 
had been brought to trial by his Bishop for having 
habitually omitted the Avord " regenerate " in the use of 
the Baptismal Office. The Evangelicals had fallen into 
the popular habit of conceiving that the word " regen- 
eration " connoted an internal, conscious transforma- 
tion of the qualities of the soul. If this were its force 
it could not properly be used to describe the effect of 
Baptism upon an unconscious infant. Their conten- 
tion was that, whatever might be the grace vouchsafed 
in Baptism, such grace was contingent upon its being 
properly administered by a duly commissioned person, 
and not at all upon the enunciation of any dogmatic 
theory pronounced by the minister in connection with 
the administration of the rite. They therefore quietly 
omitted the offensive phrase. Their critics did not, 
of course, call in question the validity of the Baptism 
thus administered, but they were scandalized, or affected 
to be, by the open violation of rubrical provision. In 
more pacific times the abuse, as it unquestionably was, 
would have corrected itself by the better information 
of those who fell into it. At the General Convention 
of 1871 the following " Declaration," signed by forty- 
eight bishops, was communicated to the Lower House 
"for the information of that body concerning the 
».-. , . action of the Bishops in a matter of much 

Bishops' dec- l 

laration on gravity. " " We the subscribers, being asked 
in order to the quieting of the consciences 
of sundry ministers of the Church, to declare our con- 
viction as to the meaning of the word 'Regenerate,' 



398 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

in the Office for the Ministration of Baptism of Infants, 
do declare that in our opinion the word ' Regenerate - 
is not there so used as to declare that a moral change in 
L the subject of Baptism is wrought in the Sacrament." 

This declaration, bearing as ifc did the signatures of 
theologians whose bias was as diverse as that of Whit- 
tin gham and Lee, Williams and Cummins, would in 
ordinary times have sufficed to remove the difficulty. 
It did remove it for all future time. The question has 
never been agitated since. But, unfortunately, Cheney 

Ihad been tried and deposed in the mean time. And what 
made it worse was the fact that his trial had been con- 
ducted with so little regard to equity, by such high-hand- 
ed arbitrariness on the part of the Bishop and court, that 
on an appeal to the secular courts it was set aside in so far 
as it affected Mr. Cheney's rectorship and emoluments. 
The effect of the treatment of Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, 
Jr., Mr. Cheney, and other like occurrences convinced 
not a few among the Low Churchmen that the Church 
was being intentionally made too strait for them. So 
good a Churchman and so temperate a man as Dr. 
Sparrow of Virginia did not hesitate to declare that 
" There is a freedom for the offending Ritualist and a 
stringency of canon for the offending Evangelical which 
is wholly inexcusable. While such men as Ewer and 
Curtis are allowed to add or take away in their services 
with perfect freedom, others like Tyng and Cheney, 
upon a slight indiscretion, or for the omission of a 
word, are immediately under the Episcopal maul for 
discipline or for destruction." 1 

1 Sparrow's Life and Correspondence, p. 350. 



PEACE WITH HONOR. 399 

While Cheney's trial was going on, Dr. Sparrow 
wrote: "If he is condemned we shall have another 
The idea of Episcopal Church in these United States. 
secession. We have the Romish, the Moravian, the 
Greek, the Swedish and the Protestant Episcopal. Why 
not the 'Reformed Episcopal'?" 1 This ill-omened 
word had already been spoken in more than one quar- 
ter. Men's hearts were failing them for fear. The 
fact was that all parties in the Church were shaken 
with ill-concealed terror, and fear is at once the most 
suspicious as well as the most tyrannical of emotions. 
Each feared that his own favorite beliefs would be 
proscribed and those of his adversaries allowed. It is 
difficult to say whether, at the time, solicitude to defend 
his own truth or solicitude to suppress the other man's 
error predominated. In the summer of 1868 a Con- 
ference of Low Churchmen had been held in Chicago, 
presided over by the Hon. Felix R. Brunot. In the 
discussions of this Conference the words " withdrawal," 
' ' secession, " "a Reformed Episcopal Church ' ' were 
heard more than once. There was no intimation that 
such a project was seriously entertained. On the con- 
trary, the terms were never used except with depreca- 
tion. But the use of the word showed that the thought 
was there. One member of the Conference euphemis- 
tically expressed it : " We do not contemplate secession ; 
we contemplate being driven out." 2 

When the proposed drastic canon against Ritual 
failed of adoption in 1871, and when Dr. de Koven's 

1 Sparrow's Life and Correspondence, p. 297. 

2 Church Journal, 1868, p. 197. 



'i 



400 THE PKOTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHTTKCH. 

gauntlet lay on the floor of the General Convention, 
there "was nothing for the irreconcilables to do but 
acquiesce or to withdraw from the Church. There 
were few, if any, who really wished to secede. It is 
one thing to talk about self -expatriation in the heat of 
political strife, but it is a different thing to actually 
embark upon the craft which is ready to bear one away 
from his native land. Nothing could be more pathetic 
than the surprise and grief of the few who did secede 
when they discovered that most of those Avho had 
joined with them in denunciation of the Church's 
abuses proposed to remain with her. 

The task of leading out the malcontents was left to 

one whose life within the Church had been brief. The 

Rev. Dr. George David Cummins, Assistant 

"Keformed . & 

Episcopaii- Bishop of Kentucky, had been a bishop 
seven years, and had been in the Church 
fifteen years when he left it. It is not very clear why 
he came or why he went. He had been a Methodist 
minister, earnest, devout, useful, and gifted with an elo- 
quence more fluent and fervid than profound or cogent. 
On the 2d of December, 1873, he met, according to a call 
previously issued and widely circulated, with eight cler- 
gymen and twenty laymen at the rooms of the Young 
Men's Christian Association of New York and organ- 
ized the " Reformed Episcopal Church." 1 It does 
not lie in our way to follow the history of that body. 
It can scarcely be said to have had any history. To 

1 Aycrigg : Memoirs of the Reformed Episcopal Church. A somewhat 
rare volume, which contains a valuable but undigested mass of informa- 
tion concerning the whole subject. 



PEACE WITH HONOR. 401 

the candid observer there seemed at the time to be no 
reason d'etre for it, and none snch has since appeared. 1 
Its effect upon the Church by drawing from her mem- 
bership has not been appreciable. Things being as they 
were, that some should be so ill at ease in the Church 
during the early seventies that they should feel bound 
to withdraw, was natural. .No generous man will blame 
them overmuch. There was no need, however, to add a 
superfluous one to the already too numerous Protestant 
Churches. But the establishment of the Reformed 
Episcopal Church proved to be an almost unqualified 
gain to all concerned, except to those who composed 
it. It gave a salutary shock to all parties in the dis- 
tracted Church. While it was a secession which caused 
little loss, though among those who went out were men 
who could but ill be spared, still it demonstrated that 
secession is always possible. Much of the ill humors of 
the Church seemed to have escaped through the wound 
made in her body by the excision. At any rate, the 
temper of the Church began slowly to improve. The 
whole question, of Churchmanship was taken up again in 
a better spirit. In a few places "ritualistic " fanatics 
were relentlessly prosecuted by the ancient champions 
of Evangelicalism, and in a few cases " advanced " men 
abused the Church's hospitality, but as a Avhole the 
Church passed onward into a broader and better life. 

1 After twenty-five years it now contains about a hundred feeble con- 
gregations scattered through the United States and Canada. 



402 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



CHAPTEK XT. 

PRAYER-BOOK REVISION. 

When all parties in the Church had reached the 
point of honestly desiring peace, and of frankly accept- 
ing comprehensiveness as one of the Church's notes, 
the way was open to undertake an enterprise which 
had long been in mind. If the Church were to be the 
permanent home of men of diverse and varied tastes 
the order and arrangement of the house must needs be 
adjusted with some view to their comfort. No change 
had been made in the Prayer-Book since its adoption in 
1789. Since that time the most wonderful century in 
human history had unrolled itself. A new world had 
come in. While the heavens remained the same a new 
earth had appeared. It is a condition of divine worship 
that the consciousness of human needs and the thought 
concerning God should fit with one another. During 
the century the Church had enormously expanded her 
terrestrial view. She had awakened to a sense of her 
relationship with human society, and a hundred new 
phases of that society confronted her. The sense of 
adoration itself had taken on new moods. The Prayer- 
Book had been finally put in form with a view to serve 
as a vehicle for a decorous and decent expression 
adjusted to the worship of a Church whose self-con- 
sciousness was narrow and whose range of emotions 
was meagre. All that had changed. The Church was 



PRAYER-BOOK REVISION. 403 

now concerning herself with the multiform life of the 
new age. The Prayer-Book was inadequate. This 
"The Prayer- inadequacy had been felt for a long while, 
Book as it is." b u £ there had been no time when it was pos- 
sible to correct it. The mere fact of the Prayer-Book's 
changelessness had gained for it a sort of sentimental 
sanctity. Churchmen had come to think of it as they 
did of the Holy Scriptures. It was a finality. The 
mere suggestion of alteration was a profanity. 

When a proposal was made in the General Conven- 
tion of 1865 to correct certain typographical errors in 
the " Table for Proper Psalms," it was gravely decided 
that such discrepancies were "intentional, and as such 
made an integral part of our American Book of Com- 
mon Prayer." Changes in the Prayer-Book in the 
interest of Doctrine had been more than once sought, 
but had always been refused. Each party in turn was 
but half-hearted in pressing the changes which it de- 
sired, from fear lest the door being opened, the other 
party might bring in at it changes which would be 
dangerous. But now the time had come when a more 
fundamental need began to be felt. The Prayer-Book 
order was being departed from on this side and on that 
under the stress of an imperative necessity which no 
rubrics could stand against. Shortened forms for use 
in the Sunday-school had to be. When the Prayer- 
Book was adopted there were no Sunday-schools. 
Shorter and more flexible forms were needed for mis- 
sions and occasional services. This need had not been 
thought of when the Prayer-Book had been adopted. 
The new wine of life stirring in the Church was burst- 



404 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

ing the old bottles. How could the most conservative 
Churchman use full Morning Prayer in a congregation 
of Freedmen, not one in ten of whom could read, or 

W comprehend it when read? How could a mission 

priest be rubrical at an evangelistic service ? Changes 
in the customs of living made necessary shorter and 
more frequent services on Sunday. To be rubrical 
meant to be dangerously tedious. Morning Prayer, 
Litany, Sermon, and Holy Communion involved a de- 
votional strain of two hours or more, and two hours 
was a far longer space of time for the people of 1876 
than it had been for their more deliberate forbears of 
1776. Some relief was found in the fortunate discovery 
which the House of Bishops made and announced, that 
" Morning Prayer, Litany and Holy Communion were 
separate and distinct offices," and that it had always 
been lawful to use one or more of them independently 
of the others, provided that neither of them were ha- 
Separation of bitually disused. The dictum was accepted 
offices. wiih. some hesitation. Possibly it was 

sound, but custom was against it, the rubrics themselves 
were a trifle obstinate, and in any case the Church 
was not quite clear as to the Bishops' authority to 
express an opinion in the premises. Some found relief 
by supplementing the liturgy with extemporaneous 

\ prayers. They contended that when they had once 

delivered the required tale of rubrical bricks they were 
free to mould the clay left over according to their own 
design. But the expedient was not satisfactory. The 
extemporaneous prayers were an unseemly patch on a 
stately garment. But it became clear that something 



PRAYER-BOOK REVISION. 405 

must be done. There was grave fear lest the fetich of 
" Uniformity " should be dishonored. The ideal of 
the average Churchman had long been not only that 
"all men everywhere should call upon God," but they 
should call upon Him in the same words at the same 
time. It had been their boast that, while change and 
confusion existed elsewhere, a Churchman could go of 
a Sunday into any Church in the broad land with the 
certainty that he would hear and join in a service every 
word of which was not only hallowed, but familiar. 
This ideal had been actually realized, and for a consid- 
erable time maintained. But now it was being threat- 
ened. Would it not be better, they asked, to allow 
the Prayer-Book to be enriched with new offices and 
rendered more adaptable in its use of old ones than 
to run the risk of allowing lawlessness and variety to 
come in under the plea of necessity ? 

This course commended itself the more by the fact 
that now there were men capable of doing the needed 
work. Fifty years earlier there had been no Science of 
Liturgies. There had been Commentaries upon the 
Prayer-Book, and treatises abundant upon the doc- 
trinal enormities of the Missal. But these were either 
for the ends of edification or controversy, and threw 
little light upon the origin, the structure, or the philos- 
ophy of public and common worship. But within half 
a century all that ' had been changed. ' ' Probably no 
period of corresponding length in the whole range of 
English Church history had shown itself so rich in the 
fruits of Liturgical study. ' ' * Palmer had, with infi- 

1 Huntington : History of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 82. 



406 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

nite learning and pains, traced the Origines Liturgicce; 
Maskell had recovered the Rituals of the past and 
collated them ; Bright had gathered together and trans- 
The science lated the Ancient Collects ; John Mason 
of liturgies. Neaie, Card well, Stephens, Lathbury, Proc- 
ter, Scudamore, and a fine company of scholars and 
historians had created a science of Liturgies, as new 
and as real as the New Chemistry, or Political Econ- 
omy. This knowledge had passed over to this side of 
the water, been absorbed, assimilated, and added to. 

In the General Convention of 1877 the following 
resolution was offered by the Pev. Dr. "Win. P. Hunt- 
ington : 

"Resolved: that a joint Committee to* consist of 
seven Bishops, seven presbyters and seven laymen be 
chosen to consider and report to the next Convention 
what changes, if any, are needed in the rubrics in the 
Book of Common Prayer in order to remove existing 
difficulties of interpretation, to amend the Lectionary, 
and to provide by abbreviation or otherwise for the 
better adaptation of the services of the Church to the 
wants of all sorts and conditions of men." 

This was the formal beginning of a movement for 
the revision of the Liturgy which engrossed the atten- 
tion and absorbed the energies of the Church for more 
than a dozen years. At first it seemed to be started 
in vain. Although the judgment' and conscience of 
the Church were enlisted, its inertia and blind con- 
servatism blocked the way. The Committee on the 
Prayer-Book to which the resolution was referred rec- 
ommended through its chairman, the Rev. Dr. Beards- 



PEATER-BOOK REVISION. 407 

ley, that it be discharged from further consideration of 
the matter, and the recommendation was adopted. 1 

The time was ripe, and the Church was ready, but 
the General Convention did not know it. 

Three years later, in 1880, the Rev. Dr. Huntington 
again moved for the same joint commission to " consider 
and report to the next General Convention, whether, 
in view of the fact that this Church is soon to enter 
Revision upon the second century of its organized 
begun. existence in this country, the changed condi- 

tions of national life do not demand certain alterations 
in the Book of Common Prayer, in the direction of 
Liturgical enrichment and increased flexibility of use. ' ' 

The discussions during the three years preceding 
had already shown that the mind of the Church was 
fixed upon such movement. The resolution was passed 
and the Commission appointed. 2 

In 1883 the Commission reported the result of their 
work with a proposed ' ' Prayer-Book Annexed ' ' 
thereto. The changes and additions recommended were 
named in a statement of forty-five printed pages. In 
general, the Book Annexed provided for the omission 
The Book °^ a ^ ew obsolete prayers, and for a clarifi- 
Annexed. cation of rubrical obscurities; for the resto- 
ration to the original form of certain mutilated or cur- 
tailed anthems and canticles ; for the addition of many 

1 Journal Gen. Con., 1877, p. 132. 

2 The commission was composed of Bishops Williams, Lay, Stevens, 
Coxe, Young, Doane, and Huntington ; the Rev. Drs. Huntington, Dal- 
rymple, Goodwin, Dix, Harwood, and Harrison ; Messrs. Hamilton Fish, 
Henry Copee, Hugh W. Sheffey, E. T. Wilder, John W. Andrews, James 
M. Smith, Hill Burgwin. 









408 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



prayers and thanksgivings and of a few new offices; 
and chiefly to break up the interlaced and cumbrous 
plan of binding together separate services. The Com- 

1 mission specially disavowed any changes touching the 

statements or standards of doctrine, and they claimed 
to have been guided ' ' by those principles of liturgical 
construction and ritual use which have made the Book 
of Common Prayer what it is." 

The Commission's proposal met a not very hospitable 
welcome. Literary precisians criticised it for fault in 
taste. Some attacked it because the changes proposed 
were so few and so trivial that it was not worth while 
to upset established custom in order to adopt them; and 
some because they were so numerous and radical that 
their adoption would be revolutionary. Some saw in it 
a covert attack upon accepted doctrine, and some faulted 
because it failed to utilize the opportunity to teach 
catholic truth. In Virginia it was charged with Mari- 
olatry; in Ohio with Latitudinarianism; in Wisconsin 
with Puritanism. 1 High Churchmen saw in its adoption 
the final breaking down of ritual uniformity, and Broad 
Churchmen saw in it the attempt to bring in again the 
tyranny of mechanical rule. In any case the General 
Convention declined to adopt it. After weeks passed 
in a minute examination of the Book, line by line, in the 
" Committee of the Whole," the subject was referred 
to the next Convention. When six more years had 
passed, and the proposed changes had been winnowed 
by discussion in newspapers, pamphlets, current dis- 
cussion, and diocesan conventions, a Kevised Prayer- 

1 Huntington: History of Prayer-Book Revision, p. 157. 

n 






PRAYER-BOOK REVISION. 409 

Book was finally adopted, and the agitation was ended 
for a long time to come. Some gain had been made. 
The enrichment was but meagre. A Collect, Epistle, 
and Gospel were added for the Feast of Transfigura- 
tion. A Penitential Office was inserted. Certain 
Canticles were restored to their integrity, and the 
Nunc DimiUis and Magnificat replaced. Sundry Yer- 
sicles and Collects were added. In the way of rubrical 
ease and flexibility much was gained. It was made 
possible to bring a public service within a reasonable 
compass of time without straining rubrics. But the 
greatest gain was attained unconsciously and uninten- 
tionally. The fetich of "Uniformity" was quietly 
pushed from its shrine. During the years of agita- 
tion and uncertainty, of dubiety concerning rubrics, 
of experimental and tentative regulation, men learned 
that it is of more consequence that a Service should 
edify the particular congregation engaged in it than 
that it should coincide at every period with the service 
in which other congregations are engaged at the same 
hour. They learned that the Prayer-Book was for the 
Church, and not the Church for the Prayer-Book. 
They came to realize that the Book of Common Prayer 
is not rightly a manual of instruction as to how Divine 
Service shall be performed, but an ideal to which such 
service ought to conform. 

Since this truth came to be perceived and gained 
currency the Liturgy has taken on a new life. It has 
come to be an angel bidding the devout soul to prayer, 
and ceased to be a tyrannous master of rites command- 
ing a ceremonial. 



410 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



) 



CHAPTEE m XVI. 

THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 

When the Church of England awoke at the middle 
of the century to a consciousness of her catholicity she 
was dismayed at her isolation. She began to draw 
back unconsciously from her Protestant friendships, 
but only then did she begin to realize the width and 
depth of the chasms which divided her from the other 
branches of the Catholic Church. The American 
Church was oppressed by the sense of loneliness still 
more. In Great Britain the Church was, and is, so 
great and strong, and touches the Christian world at so 
many points, that she is, to a great degree, sufficient 
unto herself. But the American Church is small and 
her life meagre. Unlike her English mother, she does 
not hold conspicuous place in the world of politics, 
education, or social order. The sense of ecclesiastical 
loneliness has led her into persistent effort to find fel- 
lowship and prove kinship with Churches remote in 
space and alien in history and temper. These wander- 
ings in search of legitimate brethren have only been 
saved from grotesqueness by their pathos. The result 
has been but small. Not seldom the proffered recog- 
nition has been answered by a perfunctory courtesy 
which but thinly veiled indifference or doubt of her 
legitimacy. 



THE CHUBCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 411 

In 1868 a Memorial was presented to the General 
Convention entreating that body " to take into imme- 
diate and prayerful consideration the question whether 
it is not alike your duty and your privilege to at once 
Looking to open up formal negotiations with the author- 
ise East. jti es f ^ e Russian Church, and if it seems 
good to you, with the other orthodox Churches of the 
East." In response a joint Commission was appointed 
to go or send upon this quest. In 1871 the Commis- 
sion reports that they had joined with those of the 
English Church interested in the same end, and that 
by their endeavors the Archbishop of Canterbury had 
been moved to send a brotherly epistle to the Patriarch 
of Constantinople, enclosing with it a copy of the 
Prayer-Book, and praying the good offices of the 
Orthodox Clergy to baptize the children, minister to 
the sick, and bury the dead of such members of the 
Anglican Communion as might be travelling or sojourn- 
ing in the Orient. To this missive the Patriarch replied, 
after the complimentary style of the East, that he ' ' had 
received with the greatest joy the highly esteemed letter 
sent by your Holiness to our humility, and are rejoiced to 
the bottom of our heart, ' ' and saying that the Clergy 
of the East are always ready, " even if not expressly 
exhorted by any of the Venerable British Bishops to 
offer any facility to bury English strangers who die 
here." As to baptizing their children, he remains 
politely silent. As to the Prayer-Book, he says that he 
has examined it with care to see how far it bears out 
the statement of its Preface that it " contains nothing 
contrary to the Word of God and to sound doctrine." 



412 THE PEOTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHUECH. 

The result of such examination shows a condition of 
things which " throws us into suspense. " These things 
are the teaching of the Prayer-Book concerning the 

\i eternal existence of the Holy Spirit; the number of 

the Sacraments ; concerning Apostolic Tradition ; con- 

\ cerning the Divine Eucharist; the discourteous assertion 

that "the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria and 
Antioch have erred ; ' ' and the essentials generally of 
' ' the distinguished Confession of the XXXIX Arti- 
cles." The final judgment of the Patriarch is that 
' ' we will therefore pray with our soul to the Author 
and Finisher of our salvation to enlighten the under- 
standing of all with the light of His knowledge, and 
to make all nations of one speech, of the one faith, and 
of the one love, and of the one hope of the gospel; that 
with one mouth and with one heart, as children of one 
and the same mother, the Church — the first born and 
Catholic Church — we may glorify the Triune God." 1 
With this devout aspiration, in which all parties con- 

icerned could join, even though it was not quite what 
some had asked for, the negotiations with the Oriental 
Church came to rest. At that point they still stand. 

The ecclesiastical Japhet in search of a brother next 
turned his steps towards the " Italian Reform Move- 
itaiian ment." In this case, as there were no 

reform. bishops likely to be open to negotiation, the 

Commission appointed consisted of Clergy and laity, 
with the Bishop of Western New York as its honorary 
president. 2 



1 Gen. Con. Journal, 1871, Appendix vi. 
8 Gen. Con. Journal, 1874, Appendix v. 






THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 413 

The promulgation of the Papal Infallibility dogma 
and the overthrow of the Papal States was the occasion 
of a widespread commotion within the Roman Church. 
It was hoped and believed that the agitation and dissat- 
isfaction among some of her bishops and many of her 
priests and laymen might be brought to a head and 
guided to an open revolt. It presently became evident, 
however, that this was not to be. The centre of 
agitation moved from Italy and passed to Switzerland, 
Holland, and the Rhine. When it took the form of 
the " Old Katholik Movement," it found the Bishops 
of Maryland and Pittsburg to meet and fraternize with 
it at Bonn and Cologne. The movement never pos- 
sessed vitality or hope. Once again the American 
Church was disappointed in the comradeship she hoped 
from it. 

The next move was towards Mexico. Although the 
final outcome of this venture was about equally disap- 
pointing, the outlook was far more encouraging and 
the reasons for intervention were nobler. 

The same social and political forces which overthrew 
the Papal rule in Italy broke down the authority of the 
Church in Mexico. A reform movement had set in 
there after the overthrow of Santa Anna in 1855. 
How widespread and powerful it became it is not easj- 
to know. It is a fact, at any rate, that as many as 
seventy-four priests ventured to sign a protest and 
memorial against the abuses and corruptions 
of the Romish Church. When Juarez 
came into power he took the malcontents under his 
protection, and gave them two churches in the City of 



414 THE PKOTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHUKCH. 

Mexico. Upon his fall, brought about by the com- 
bined French, English, and Spanish influences, the 
" Reformed Church" disappeared from sight. Two 
intrepid priests, Martinez and Dominguez, after two 
years of exile in the United States, returned to Mata- 
, * moras at the mouth of the Rio Grande, and tried to 

re-collect their scattered flocks. Farther south Aguil- 
lar, another priest of high character and noble repute, 
stood fast by the cause of reform. Notwithstanding 
that guarantees of religious liberty had been repealed, 
a considerable body of Mexicans, how many is not 
known, maintained a loose and precarious organization 
against the tyrannies of the Roman Church. In 1866 
the Presiding Bishop, Hopkins, was notified that the 
' ' New Christian Church in Mexico ' ' had nominated 
the presbyter Rafael Diaz Martinez for Bishop, and 
asked for his consecration at the hands of the Ameri- 
can Bishops. Bishop Hopkins was obliged to reply 
that there were canonical hindrances in the way, and 
that their request could not be entertained. Two 
years later a commission from the Mexican reformers 
came to New York in the same cause, and, by accident, 
made the acquaintance of the Rev. Theodore Riley, 
an American priest who had been reared in Chili, and 
whose mother-tongue was Spanish. Dr. Riley being 
possessed of private fortune, not being bound by paro- 
chial ties in the United States, and being practically 
a South American Spaniard in temperament, took up 
the case of the Mexican priests with ardor and returned 
with them to Mexico. Just how successful were the 
labors- of himself and his confreres is impossible to be 



) 



i 



THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 415 

learned. In 1874 they write of twenty-seven regular 
congregations, five of these being in the capital city. 
But both before and after that time returns of the most 
discrepant character were forthcoming. Sometimes 
it would appear that a Avave of reform was sweep- 
ing abroad which this Church had only to guide in 
order to constitute a new national Church. But 
almost by the next mail would come the 

Contradictory , » . 

reports from report that the reform had practically died 
out. The truth seems to have beeu that the 
conditions necessary to the creating of a reformed 
Church were never present. JSTo Latin people have ever 
conducted to a successful issue a revolt against Rome. 
The Teuton sharply separates in thought between his 
religious and his political life, and arranges the ma- 
chinery of the one without reference to the other. The 
Latin steadily confuses them. Thus the " New Chris- 
tian Church in Mexico" felt every shifting current of 
political air. It dissolved and recombined in a way 
which first bewildered and then exasperated the Amer- 
ican Church, who tried to make businesslike terms with 
it. Concerning no portion of the Church's missionary 
work have there been such contradictory reports as 
concerning the Church in Mexico. It is possible that 
all the reports were true, for the reason that they were 
made about a contradictory body. 

In August, 1874, a council was held in the City of 
Mexico and a memorial adopted to the Bishops of the 
American Church: 

" We, members of the Synod of the Church of Jesus 
in Mexico — a branch of the Christian Church that 



416 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

desires to preserve in all its purity the primitive faith, 
and in all their integrity the order and ministry of the 
Church, solicit the Bishops of the Protestant Epis- 
copal Church in the United States to take such meas- 
ures as may lead to the granting us the Episcopate, we 
being ready to give the necessary guarantees for the 
maintenance of the faith and the due order in the min- 
istry of the Church." 

This memorial was presented to the House of Bish- 
ops in 1874, and occasioned a lively interest in the 
Church generally. By Article X of the Constitution 
the power to consecrate Bishops "for foreign countries 
on due application therefor" is lodged in the House 
of Bishops. The power to grant the petition of the 
memorial was unquestioned. But two preliminary 
questions were to be answered. Can this Church, 
without violating Catholic custom and law, intrude her 
Episcopate within the borders of territory where there 
already is a branch of the Catholic Church ? It was 

(brought to mind that when Bishop Southgate had been 
sent to Constantinople, thirty years earlier, it had only 
been done after every precaution had been taken to 
guard against even the semblance of intrusion within a 
Church quite as corrupt as the Roman Church in Mex- 
ico; that no one had even so much as ventured to sug- 
I gest the consecration of a bishop for our mission in 

Greece; and that the failure of the Constantinople pro- 
ject might well be regarded as a penalty for the viola- 
tion of Catholic rule. To this it was replied that 
giving the Episcopate to a church already organized 
was quite a different matter from going " bishoping in 



THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 417 

another man's diocese"; that in any case it was too 
late in the day to raise the objection, inasmuch as more 
than one-half the territory of our own Church had pos- 
sessed another Episcopate and had had within it a Cath- 
olic Church when it became part of the United States; 
that the same academic argument which would preclude 
an entrance into Mexico would have shut us out from 
the whole "Louisiana Purchase," from Texas, and 
from California. Not a few sympathized with the 
Bishop of Connecticut, who roundly maintained that 
the Church of Rome, by her enormities in doctrine and 
practice, had forfeited her place in the Catholic sister- 
hood, so that no terms of comity Avere bounden as 
towards her. But a second and more practical question 
took precedence of the academic one: Was there a 
Reformed Church in Mexico? Whom and how many 
did the memorialists represent ? 

As is the custom in such affairs, a Commission was 
appointed for the business. 1 Whether this Commission 
was created "with power to act," or only to examine 
and report, afterwards gave rise to much dispute. In 
1875 Bishop Lee proceeded to Mexico to look into the 
situation. He found and visited in the City of Mexico 
one congregation of four or five hundred people, 
„ . " largely of the humbler class, and with the 

Mexican ° v 

commission prevailing type of feature and complexion 
strongly Indian. ' ' At the same time there 
was handed to him a list of about thirty other con- 
gregations throughout the country. His search for 

1 Bishops Whittingham, Lee of Delaware, Bedell, Coxe, Kerfoot, and 
Lit tie John. 



418 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

facts does not appear to have been either very thorough 
or very intelligent, but he plainly was convinced of the 
existence of a Reformed Church in Mexico. On strength 
of that conviction he confirmed upward of a hundred 
persons, and ordained seven candidates who were pre- 
sented, to the Diaconate and Priesthood. When he 
returned to the United States he brought with him a 
proposed form of concordat between the House of 
Bishops and the " Junta Central of the Church of Jesus 
in Mexico." By the terms of this agreement the party 
of the first part was to consecrate one or more persons 
as bishops ; and by a Commission or otherwise, to ad- 
minister the affairs of the new Church until it should 
possess at least three bishops of its own. The party of 
the second part pledges itself to hold to the Apostles' 
and Mcene Creeds as its doctrinal formula ; to maintain 
the Episcopal ministry and regimen; and not to receive 
* or establish any doctrines or articles of belief contrary 
to the formularies of the Protestant Episcopal Churchy 

IA11 looked promising. It appeared as though, if 
not a nation, at any rate a Church had been born in a 
day. But, as months went on, uneasiness spread. 
Bishop Whittingham was disturbed at the looseness of 
doctrine and the indifference to truth displayed by the 
new Church. 1 A copy of the liturgy in use had fallen 
into his hands, which he pronounced monstrous. 
Bishop Kerfoot, with his plain sense, declared that he 

1 Brand : Life of Whittingham, vol. ii. p. 258. 

1 " For myself I feel bound to say that without a disavowment of such 
a production no Iglesia calling itself de Jesus, however loud in its profes- 
sion of holiness, catholicity, apostolicity and Christianity could obtain my 
consent to any such recognition as is proposed." 






THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 419 

had "been grievously disappointed as to the evidence 
of the existence of any Mexican Church, properly 
speaking, or in the sense of Article X of our Consti- 
tution. "* The situation was difficult. Bishop Lee 
had recognized the Church and ordained ministers for 
it. Two Candidates for Bishops were ready and 
waiting. If nothing were done the new organization 
would either be reabsorbed by Rome or would drift 
into the Presbyterian or Methodist Churches, both of 
whom were present and active in the field. After five 
years of hesitation the Commission were fain to be 
content with such assurances and guarantees of doc- 
trinal soundness as they could get, and in April, 1879, 
they consecrated the Rev. Dr. Riley Bishop of the 
Valley of Mexico. It soon became apparent to all can- 
did observers both that there really was no 

Consecration J 

of Bishop national organization which could be called a 
Mexican Church within the intent of Article 
X of the Constitution, and that Bishop Riley was as far 
as possible from being the proper head of such a society 
as did exist. The promised Prayer-Book was not forth- 
coming ; debts were contracted without authority, and 
were not paid ; property which was supposed to belong 
to the Church was found to be in the personal name of 
the Bishop. After Q.ve years of inconsequential work, 
Bishop Riley resigned his jurisdiction into the hands of 
the Commission which had consecrated him, and the 
" Mexican Church " lapsed into its present status of a 
mission carried on under the general oversight and 
authority of the Presiding Bishop. 

1 Brand : Life of Whittingham, p. 260. 



420 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

While the Church was waiting in humble attitude 
before the Patriarch of Constantinople, coquetting 
ponderously with the Old Catholics and dreaming of 
\| an Episcopal Church in Mexico, an incomprehensible 

perversity led her to call in question and then suspend 
her fraternal relations with the two Episcopal Churches 
at her door. For half a century Moravian and Swed- 
ish Orders had been acknowledged without question. 
The Moravians were a small body, and their path rarely 
crossed that of this Church, but the validity of their 
Episcopate had always been recognized, and was in 
fact beyond question. 1 With the Church of Sweden 
I Anglican relations had been most intimate in the past, 

and the immigration of thousands of Swedes made it 
all the more important that those relations should be 
maintained. In Colonial times the Bishop of London 
had commissioned priests in Swedish orders to officiate 
in American Churches, 2 and the Society for the Propa- 
gation of the Gospel had paid them their stipends. 3 In 
1837 the Bishop of London had officially requested a 
bishop of the Swedish Church to confirm for him. In 
1861 the punctilious Bishop of Illinois accepted the 
Kev. Jacob Bredberg " on his letters of orders from the 
Bishop of Skara," and the same year Bishop White- 
house celebrated the Holy Communion in the royal 
chapel of Stockholm. Notwithstanding all this, the 
Church began twenty years ago to feel, or at least to 

1 affect, a doubt of the validity of the Moravian and 

1 Ritter : Moravian Church in Philadelphia, p. 223. 
1 De Schweinilz : History of the Unitas Fratrem, p, 647. 
8 Past and Present : G. Hammerskold, p. 7. 
8 Records of Holy Trinity : Old Swedes Church, p. 26. 



THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 421 

Swedish pedigree. Commissions were appointed upon 
bDth questions. The offence to both was great, and 
would seem to have been gratuitous. Those whom the 
Church had heretofore treated as sisters suddenly had 
the legitimacy of their birth called in question. Thus far 
neither Commission has seen its way to report yes or no. 
Meanwhile the Church's isolation weighed upon 
her more and more.- In the midst of a Christian 
nation she was without companionship. Realizing 
more intensely than any other section of American 
Christianity the imperativeness of organic unity, she 
appeared of all others to be most entirely outside the 
sphere of practical friendship. She had been led by 
ecclesiastical doctrinaires into a false position. Her 
natural and historical relations were with the Protestant 
world in the midst of which she lived. That this was her 
own conviction when permitted to speak her real mind 
appeared at the General Convention of 1886. From the 
Diocese of Indiana came a memorial praying the Church 
in this General Convention assembled " to issue to the 
Christian world an open letter embodying her princi- 
ples, her suggestions, and her prayers for 
unity move- Christian unity. ' ' The Diocese of Kentucky 
presented a similar petition, and reminded 
the Convention that Central Pennsylvania had adopted 
a like resolution. The Diocese of Louisiana sent up a 
-memorial begging the Convention to instruct its Com- 
mittee on Ecclesiastical Relationship to " abandon the 
passive policy hithertofore followed in respect to those 
bodies of Christians generally recognized as Evangel- 
icals; and to send overtures in writing to the governing 



422 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

bodies of the said several denominations, inviting them 

I to conference on the matter of Church Unity. ' ' Peti- 

tions also came up from Texas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania. 
But the unmistakable temper of the Church was shown 
by a General Memorial, signed by thirty-two bishops 

I and eleven hundred clergy and more than three thou- 

sand laymen, praying the General Convention to take 
" such action as it may deem expedient to further the 
organic unity of Christians in this land." The memo- 
rialists urged this action on the statesmanlike grounds 
that in this new land denominational dissensions have 
not yet crystallized into hardness as in older lands; 
that a desire for unity is plainly growing ; that a more 
lively interest is being shown by those without in the 
doings of the Church; that Churchmen have become 
more ready to acknowledge the vast amount of truth 
which other Christian bodies hold in common with 
them; that party lines are vanishing within the Church; 
that the Church Idea and the desire for liturgical ex- 
pression are spreading everywhere; that there is a 
universal discontent with long and metaphysical Con- 
fessions, and the desire to be content with the simple 
and primitive Creeds. 

All these memorials were referred to the " Commit- 
tee on the State of the Church." A " Committee on 

v Ecclesiastical Relations ' ' had been in existence since 

1874, but it had thus far manifested neither the ability 
nor the wish to discover any relations, except in some 
far country. The temper of the Church now de- 
manded that something be done. It was therefore 
resolved to create a joint Commission on Christian 



THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 423 

Unity, whose policy should be to move out into the open 
and bear to the divided Christian world a definite mes- 
sage of good will and a proposal for union. Mean- 
while the House of Bishops had been considering the 
same matter, and now announced the following: 

"Declaration to whom it may concern, and espe- 
cially to our fellow Christians of the different Com- 
munions in our land who, in their several spheres, have 
contended for the religion of Christ. 

" 1. Our earnest desire that the Saviour's prayer that 
we all may be one, may, in its deepest and truest 
sense, be speedily fulfilled; 

" 2. That we believe that all who have been duly 
baptised with water in the name of the Father and of 
The Quadri- the Son anc ^ °^ ^ ne Holy Ghost are members 
lateral. Q f t ^ e jjoly Catholic Church; 

" 3. That in all things of human ordering or of 
human choice relating to modes of worship and disci- 
pline, and to traditional customs, this Church is ready, 
in the spirit of love and humility, to forego all prefer- 
ences of her own; 

4 ' 4. That this Church does not seek to absorb other 
communions, but rather, cooperating with them on the 
basis of common faith and order, to discountenance 
schism, to heal the wounds of the body of Christ, and 
to promote the Charity which is the chief of Christian 
graces and the visible manifestation of Christ in the 
world. 

"Bat furthermore we do hereby affirm that the 
Christian unity now so earnestly desired can be restored 
only by the return of all Christian communions to the 



424 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

principle of unity exemplified by the undivided Cath- 
olic Church during the first ages of its existence, which 
principles we believe to be the substantial deposit of 
\ Christian faith and rule committed by Christ and His 

Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world. 
* "As inherent parts of the sacred deposit, and there- 

fore as essential to the restoration of unity among the 
divided branches of Christendom, we account the fol- 
lowing, to wit: — 

"I. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Tes- 
tament as the revealed word of God ; 

" II. The Mcene Creed as the sufficient statement of 
^ the Christian faith; 

" III. The two Sacraments, baptism and the Supper 
of the Lord, ministered with unfailing use of Christ's 
words and of the elements ordained by Him ; 

" IV. The historic episcopate, locally adapted in the 
method of its administration to the varying needs of 
the nations and peoples called of God into the unity 
of His Church. 

' ' Furthermore, deeply grieved by the sad divisions 
which afflict the Christian Church in our own land, we 
hereby declare our desire and readiness, so soon as there 
shall be any authorized response to this Declaration, to 
enter into brotherly conference with all or any Chris- 
tian bodies seeking the restoration of the organic unity 
of the Church." 

IThis declaration was adopted by the Lower House, 
and the joint Commission appointed and instructed to 
enter into negotiations in any directions which might 
open. No action of so great moment and so pregnant 



THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 425 

of possibilities had been taken by the American Church 
since its organization. There were but few who dis- 
cerned its wide implications. When they began to 
appear, not a few stood aghast at what had been done 
and what it might involve. Was the declaration an 
ultimatum upon which the Church was willing to 
coalesce with any organization who might accept it? 
If so, did it, in its enumeration of things necessary, 
mean what it said? In that case, it was contended, 
the reunited Church might be found not only without 
the Prayer-Book, but without any liturgy; without any 
provision for Confirmation; without the Athanasian 
Creed or the XXXIX Articles; without any of those 
valued and endeared Ecclesiastical customs and arrange- 
ments which Churchmen had been accustomed to think 
of as part of the very Church herself. It was nothing 
less than a proposal to commit suicide in the hope of a 
vague and uncertain metempsychosis. It offered to 
abandon all distinctive Churchmanship in the interest 
of an iridescent dream. Even the President of the 
House of Deputies, upon whom devolved the duty of 
naming the men who were to execute it, disapproved 
of the scheme utterly. 

As a matter of fact, it was suicidal in the sense that 
it proposed to the Church to lose her life that she 
might find it again. That suggestion has always 
seemed a hard saying to practical men. The more the 
proposition was discussed the more doubtful it became 
whether the Church either would or could stand to her 
offer in case it should be accepted by any large denomi- 
nation. 



ft 



426 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



Debate quickly concentrated itself on one unfortu- 
nate and ambiguous phrase. When the Church spoke 
of the " Historic Episcopate" it had in its mind that 
threefold historic ministry of nnbroken Catholic cus- 
tom — bishops, priests, and deacons. Protestant writers 
and speakers, on the other hand, not being familiar with 
that connotation, took the words for the face of them, 
and saw in the " Quadrilateral " nothing but an impu- 
dent proposal by the bishops to lord it over the rest of 
God's heritage. The Baptists responded to the over- 
ture with fraternal greeting, courteous but non-com- 
mittal. The Methodists replied by reminding us that 
they possessed an Episcopate already quite good enough 
for their purposes. The Presbyterian General Assem- 
bly appointed a Committee of great dignity and char- 
acter to confer with the Joint Commission. After 
several years of negotiation, sometimes hopeful and 
sometimes otherwise, the Committees came to a dead- 
lock upon the demand that, as a condition of further 
correspondence, the Church must acknowledge practi- 
cally the validity of Presbyterian orders, and their 
Committee was discharged. In the Convention of 
1892 the Rev. Dr. Huntington offered an amendment 
to the Constitution which would have enabled any 
bishop without further ado to act in the spirit of the 
Declaration by receiving under his care any congrega- 
tion which might be willing to accept its terms, even 
though it did not choose to conform to the ritual and 
custom of the Church or to become a component part 
of the organization. The amendment was lost by the 
failure of four dioceses to agree, and thus preventing a 

: 



THE CHURCH SEEKING FELLOWSHIP. 427 

majority vote. 1 In 1895 substantially the same propo- 
sition was offered again in a modified form, and met a 
more decided rejection. 

The Joint Commission still continues. The logic of 
events seems to be drawing the Church towards a point 
where she must either take practical measures to make 
good her proposal to the Protestant world or definitely 
withdraw her proffer. Meanwhile her action has had 
the effect to bring the question of Church unity out of 
the region of pious speculation and compel a place for 
it in practical ecclesiastical politics. 

i Gen. Con. Journal, 1892, p. 329. 



428 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



CHAPTEE XYII. 

THE NET RESULT. 

In his " American Common wealth " Mr. Bryce makes 
an interesting although cautious estimate of the relig- 
ious life of the people of the United States. His judg- 
ment is that the diffused religiousness is more intense 
than that of the Continental peoples of Europe, prob- 
ably about the same as that of England, and rather less 
than that of Scotland. But he points out that it has a 
quality of its own. It is Christian, of course, but it 
is American. It has a flavor, a tinge, a character dif- 
ferent from the Christianity which exists elsewhere. 
It is not easy to say just wherein this peculiarity con- 
sists. Institutions, doctrines, rituals, are much the 
isame as in the rest of the world, but the impression 
which it makes upon the observer is characteristic. 

Is it possible to discover and discriminate the Church's 
influence in forming American Christianity as it now 
exists ? Has she had any real effect, and if so, what ? 
No task could be more difficult or delicate than the 
attempt to make such an estimate. The required 
information, the candor, and the skill are all alike hard 
to command. And yet no history of the Church can 
be deemed complete with this task left unat tempted, 
for it is in this way rather than by the exhibition of 
statistics that the Church's present position is to be 






THE NET RESULT. 429 

measured. The data are hard to obtain. Every con- 
siderable sect in the United States has had its history 
written, both by friends and enemies. But practically 
no attempt has been made to weigh the influence which 
each has had upon another or upon the life of the peo- 
ple as a whole. There are no authorities to be con- 
sulted in the attempt to traverse this untrodden ground. 
This historic fact itself is one sufficiently interesting to 
be recorded. 

The religious life of the people of the United States 
has been derived through many sources. It may be 
likened to a broad moving river fed by affluents which 
stream into it from a hundred quarters. Of course 
when these tributaries merge into the broad stream 
they lose for the most part their distinctive colors. 
But this fusion was not effected at once. In some 
instances a tributary stream acts as does the Blue Nile 
in the great river of Egypt. It keeps its color and its 
especial density in the midst of the flood with which it 
moves. But all, sooner or later, merge themselves so 
entirely in the common current that only something 
like a chemical analysis will discover the several contri- 
butions. 

It is to be remarked that the societies within which 
the people conduct their religious lives are almost with- 
out exception of foreign origin. Only two or three 
denominations calling themselves Churches can be 
named which originated in the United States. These 
are the "Christian," the Mormon, and the Eeformed 
Episcopal. This country has not been prolific in sects. 
The tendency, though slow, has been, upon the whole, 



430 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

towards unification. No " Confessions of Faith" are 
of American manufacture. The only one which has 
exercised any considerable influence, the Cambridge 
\l Platform, has been well-nigh forgotten. The same 

might be said generally of the imported Articles and 
Confessions, also, so far as their actual influence upon 
the religious life of the people is concerned. 

In order to estimate the influence of the Church a 
brief historical survey will be necessary. It is difficult 
to realize that almost two-thirds of the history of the 
people of the United States lies anterior to the Revo- 
lutionary War. The events which have occurred since 
that date have been so striking and have moved in such 
rapid sequence, that they throw into the background 
the colonial period. Nevertheless, it is within that 
period that one must seek the causes which to-day 
show their results in many important areas of life. 

In regard of their every-day habits of religious 
thought and action the early colonists may be roughly 

I classed in three groups — the Southern, the Eastern, and 

the Middle Colonies. These people were more alike 
religiously than is often assumed, but they had also cer- 
tain different tendencies, which made them draw quick- 
ly apart. To begin with, they were all alike Church 
of England people. That foundation of unconscious 
habit and custom upon which all conscious belief rests 
was that which had been slowly laid during the pre- 
ceding centuries of Christian England. And habit has 
to do quite as much as volition with every-day religion. 
One assumption which was fixed in the very structure 
of their thought was the union of Church and State. 



I 



, 



THE NET RESULT. 431 

They were all alike in this. Our assumption of the 
normal separateness of Church and State was not even 
thinkable by them. But the groups differed from each 
other in the distribution of emphasis which they laid 
upon religious and civil institutions. In Yirginia and 
Maryland they conceived of the Church as a depart- 
ment of State. The civil side was uppermost in their 
thought when they came here, just as it had been upper- 
most while they abode in Old England. The ideal of 
a Yirginia parish was to reproduce the life of a Dev- 
onshire parish. Priest and people came out together, 
and the squire was a more considerable person than the 
parson here, as he had been there. They thought to 
organize a new society whose predicate was State, and 
of which the term Christian was but a descriptive 
epithet. Organized society was a personality which 
had both secular and spiritual relations, but they be- 
lieved that its life was best and most safely conducted 
from the secular side. The Church was subordinated 
to the State. 

The New England colonists were Church of England 
people also. That little group of Independents who 
landed at Plymouth had but little influence in affairs. 
Their experiment was soon concluded. Their ideal 
was not to be realized until more than two centuries 
should have elapsed. The Puritans were members of 
the Church of England. Their early Clergy were 
Episcopally ordained. Their enterprise set out with 
the benediction of the bishop. They also conceived of 
Church and State as one. The modern idea of the 
Church as a voluntary association, having its life in 



432 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

the midst of a State with which it has no official 
connection, was inconceivable to them, and would have 
been abhorrent if it had been suggested. They were 
the highest of high Churchmen. The Southern Colonist 
had in mind to found a State which should contain 
, * a Church, the Northern had in mind to found a Church 

which should include a State. 

The third group, New York, Pennsylvania, and New 
Jersey, were dominated by a different motive. They 
included a far smaller proportion of pure English stock. 
The Scotch, Dutch, and Germans brought with them 
a different set of prepossessions. The idea of the sepa- 
rateness of Church and State had emerged much more 
clearly in their minds while they dwelt in their old 
homes. They had not thought out very clearly any 
theory concerning the matter, but they proceeded to 
settle the great question of the Reformation by actual 
practice. They set up secular courts to secure secular 
rights, and allowed the people to group themselves 
spiritually as their several affinities might lead. 

The above was, in general, the ecclesiastical situation 
at the middle of the eighteenth century. So far as 
doctrinal beliefs were concerned, the people of the 
Colonies, whether English, Dutch, Scotch, or German, 
were what avouM now be called Calvinistic, but which 
is really Augustinian. With the exception of the 
Quakers, whom the possession of the ' ' Inner Light ' ' 
rendered indifferent to all doctrine, thy believed in the 
Fall ; the Incarnation of God in Christ ; the expiatory 
quality of Christ's life and death; in a sharp distinc-. 
tion between, the " saved " and the " lost " ; in a mate- 



THE NET RESULT. 433 

rially pictured heaven and hell; in the literal inspira- 
tion of the Bible; and took for granted the causal 
relation between religion and conduct. They were 
generally agreed in their dislike of what they called 
" enthusiasm. " They condemned and feared the ap- 
peal to the emotions in religion. This was as true of 
the Puritan of Massachusetts and the Presbyterian 
of Pennsylvania as it was of the High Churchman of 
Connecticut or the Latitudinarian of Virginia. The 
tradition of the extravagancies of the Anabaptists and 
the Fifth Monarchy men was still vivid. The Quaker, 
the Baptist, and the Mennonite were looked at askance 
by the great mass of the population. 

These were, in the main, the characteristics of the 
primary stratum of American religious life. It was 
deposited but slowly, and the various portions were so 
separated from each other in the spaciousness of a new 
country that their influence upon each other was but 
slight. 

Each denomination long retained the peculiarities 
it brought with it. A few retain them yet. There 
are certain small bodies, as, for example, the Reformed 
Presbyterian, which remain almost uninfluenced by 
the religious movement in America. Indeed, one, the 
largest of all, the Roman Church, may be left out of 
consideration in any attempt to estimate the reciprocal 
effect of the various portions upon each other. While 
it is true that the Roman Church has been profoundly 
affected by the religious and political atmosphere of 
America, so that Romanism here is easily distin- 
guished from Romanism elsewhere in the world, still it 



434 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

moves apart from the main current. " Eomanism and 
Protestantism are not, as it is so generally assumed, 
varieties of the same religion; they are different re- 
\l ligions. ' ' 1 

The Romanist lives his religious life apart from his 
Protestant neighbors, and they probably understand as 
little both its virtues and its faults as he does theirs. 

But the first religious problem which confronted the 
people of this country was one in which all alike were 
concerned. That was to delimit Church and State. 
Por the first time since Constantine, was offered both 
the opportunity and the necessity for its solution. Only 
in New York and Rhode Island was this adjustment 
reached before the War of Independence, and in these 
Colonies not completely. It is not complete yet in the 
United States as a whole. There are still undetermined 
frontiers. 2 The causes of marriage and divorce and 
the field of public education are still regions where the 
adjustment of the religious and secular is far from 
complete. 

But in this apportionment of the, concerns of life be- 
tween God and Caesar, the Episcopal Church was before 
all others. This was a necessity of the situation. Dur- 
ing the Colonial Period she had been far more closely 
bound to the civil power than had any other. The 
Revolutionary War tore her loose by violence and com- 
pletely. The " Standing Order" of Congregational- 
ism in Massachusetts and Connecticut could leisurely 

1 R. H. Hutton : Essays. 

2 For example, in one State Roman Catholics are still ineligible for 
office ; in several others infidels, atheists, and blasphemers are liable to be 
disfranchised. 



THE NET RESULT. 435 

adjust itself to the new political life during sixty years. 
But the Church in Maryland and Virginia had to do it 
at once. Politically it was an outcast in the new 
Kepublic. This drove it to organize at once as a 
national Church for sheer self-preservation. It was the 
first to do so. 1 Ever since it has held itself aloof from 
politics. The lesson it learned during the eighteenth 
century has never been forgotten. Even during the 
passionate period of the Civil War men could go to 
Church in confidence that they would hear no echo of 
party strife either in prayers or sermon. Sooner or 
later all the denominations followed in the movement. 
It came to be natural that a Church should be a free, 
voluntary organization, living its life according to its 
own rules, in the midst of a State from which it asked 
nothing but to be safeguarded against encroachment. 

But when the voluntary system began to be univer- 
sally accepted the free religious atoms began to move 
into groups according to their natural affinities. As a 
result of this new grouping, the Church began to find 
her own place and to show her own qualities. The 
diffused Protestantism of the United States has crystal- 
lized about three separate points. These are the intel- 
lect, the emotions, the conscience. About the first of 
these were ranged the whole Presbyterian group, the 
Congregationalists, the Lutherans, and later the Unita- 
rians. The note of this class is that it conceives of 
religion, as primarily a matter of intellectual consent. 



3 The Presbyterian General Assembly was constituted the same year, 
1789, but it included only a portion of the great Presbyterian family. 
Brings : American Presbyterianism, p. 3€2. 



436 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

They ask, " What do you believe ? " They stickle for 
precision of theological statement. They make or- 
thodoxy the condition of admission for the inquirer 
\l and for intercommunion among denominations. They 

possess "Confessions of Faith" and "Platforms." 
They value learning and honor doctors of Theology. 
They are coherent, logical, learned. In a word, their 
religion finds its home in the understanding rather 
than in the affections or the conscience. This is not 
to say that in the lives of their individuals they are 
hard in heart or loose in morals. But it is to say that 
when they seek for a ground upon which to effect out- 
ward and visible organization they look for that ground 
in doctrine rather than in either feeling or living. 

The second group draws together upon the ground of 
the emotions. The Baptists, Methodists, "Christians," 
the Salvation Army, the Eevivalists all hold the same 
conception of religion. They ask not, " What do you 
believe? " but " How do you feel? " The condition 
of membership for the individual is that he shall have 
passed through a definite sequence of emotions. The 
individuals are fused together in a denomination by the 
emotional fire through which they have all been passed. 
They lay comparatively little emphasis upon learning 
or logic because they have no need to do so. Their 
appeal is not, in the last resort, to the understanding, 
but to the heart. They have grown apace. Their 
strength is to win the great multitude which can be far 
more easily moved by the contagion of a divine impulse 
than it can be led to have a right understanding or to 
righteousness of life. JSTor, once again, may it be said 



THE NET RESULT. 437 

that this group is unmindful of either orthodoxy or 
morality in the individual. It is enough to say that 
as visible bodies they organize themselves about the 
emotional element in human nature. 

The third group is composed of the Church, the 
Moravians, and, as being in spiritual sympathy with 
them, the Dutch Reformed, the Reformed Presbyterian, 
and a few other small and inconspicuous bodies. All 
these, while living apart, and in many cases little known 
by one another, have one fundamental note in common. 
They think of Christ's Church not as an organization for 
the maintenance of doctrine, nor for the contagiousness 
of religious feeling, but as an Institute of Righteous- 
ness. They are substantially at one in their concep- 
tion of what Christianity essentially is. The question 
they address to the postulant is not ' ' What do you 
believe ? " nor " What do you feel ? " but " How will 
you live?" The characteristic feature of the Church 
is her attitude toward the world. To this attitude the 
Church in England and the Church in America have 
adhered tenaciously, even at times when powerful in- 
fluences both from without and within have tempted 
her to change it. In England her position has been 
reviled as Erastianism, and in America as worldliness, 
but she has held fast to it. She has remembered her 
Lord's caution, that His disciples must not expect to be 
taken out of the world, but only to be kept from evil. 
She regards the Church as an institution which has 
primary regard to the life that now is. She thinks of 
it much as she does of the State. It is intended for all 
men, good and bad alike. Its purpose is to produce 



438 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

and conserve goodness. Its dominant tone is ethical 
rather than either intellectual or emotional. It has 
often been taunted with "lack of vital piety," with 
worldliness, with cold morality. Dogmatists and emo- 
tionalists from within have attempted to transform her 
genius, but have not succeeded. Her abiding instinct 
has kept her steadfast to her conception of the Chnrch 
as an " Institute of Righteousness. ' ' This has de- 
termined her position towards Doctrine, Discipline, 
and Worship, and fixed her conditions of membership 
and intercommunion. Her only test of the truth and 
value of doctrine is its immediate effect upon living. 
Sermons are practical and ethical rather than doc- 
trinal or inspiring. Her Liturgy is valued and insisted 
upon not chiefly for its beauty or its antiquity, or its 
fitness to express exalted emotions, but because of its 
disciplinary power to uphold the soul in right living. 
For admission to membership she exacts only the mini- 
mum of belief. The general and unrelated articles 
of the Apostles' Creed are enough for a working Con- 
sensus. This, as expanded in the Nicene Creed, she 
pronounces to be " a sufficient statement of Christian 
Doctrine." That word "sufficient" in its connection 
has wide implications. It at once relegates all other 
statements of doctrine to the region of individual 
opinion. Thus far no other Church has ventured so 
bold a statement. That this is the position of the 
Church is seen by a crucial test of practice. The only 
condition on which she will turn the Key of the King- 
dom of Heaven to bind or loose is an ethical condition. 
She bids to the Holy Sacrament all those who "do 






THE NET EESULT. 439 

earnestly repent them of their sins and are in love and 
charity with their neighbors, and intend to lead a new 
life, walking in the commandments of God " ; she repels 
only those who are known to be "open and notorious 
evil livers, or to have done any wrong to their neigh- 
bors by word or deed." This conception of the 
Church's place and function in the. world is the key 
to a right understanding of her whole history. She 
attaches an importance to sacraments, ordinances, rit- 
ual, and organization which those outside not seldom 
characterize as formalism, superstition, bigotry. The 
charge would lie if these things were valued for them- 
selves or if they wer'e arbitrarily created. But, in fact, 
they have their rationale in the Church's deep sense of 
the difficulty of right living. Righteousness is at once 
a thing so arduous and of such transcendent value that 
any machinery which has proven its value to induce 
or maintain it becomes sacred and obligatory. And 
because the antithesis of holiness is selfishness, there- 
fore the Church sets her seal of condemnation upon 
individualism in the sphere of religion. Like Israel, 
she accounts that regime in which ' i every man does 
that which is right in his own eyes ' ' as the worst pos- 
sible. Because membership in the spiritual society is 
of divine obligation, she feels bound to leave the condi- 
tions of membership so simple and easy that every man 
may be able to fulfil the obligation. 

* At this point it becomes of interest to ask, To what 
extent, and by what means, has she been able to 
impress her thought concerning the Church upon the 
people of this land ? 



440 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

That the whole trend of the present time is toward 
her view is evident to any competent observer. It does 
v not follow that the movement is toward her. Dog- 

matic religion is already moribund. Emotional relig- 
ion, while popularly strong, has come to be distrusted 
, 1 by the judicious, and shows symptoms of suspecting 

itself. The age is ethical. Character is coming to 
take the place of both experience and creed, both as 
the condition of membership in Church and as the real 
exponent of Christianity. The instinct of organization 
is also astir. The Church as a machinery for producing 
righteousness in a neighborhood has come to be the 
accepted thought. Fifty years ago* this idea was hardly 
anywhere to be found. The movement generally to- 
ward a better church architecture, and a more formal 
and reverent liturgy, is an approach toward the Church's 
position. How much of this is due to the Church's 
direct influence is not easy to determine. Much of it 
simply manifests the operation of the spirit of truth, 

Iof which the Church holds no monopoly. But her 
organized presence in the land for a century has not 
been without direct result. While she has not been 
prolific of great theologians, and while the tone of her 
advocates and of her peculiar appeals may possibly have 
repelled more than they have attracted, nevertheless 
she has been for a century before the people a steadfast 
illustration of her idea of what the Church of Christ 
essentially is. Men 'have learned of her even while 
they disliked her; they have heard while they struck. 

Her influence, moreover, has been immeasurably en- 
hanced by her relationship to the Church of England. 

: 



THE NET RESULT. 441 

This has operated both directly and indirectly. The 
most powerful ecclesiastical organization of the world's 
dominant race has insensibly shared her prestige with 
the Church in the United States. The sense of rela- 
tionship with the Mother Church has made her bold 
when she would otherwise have been deprecatory, and 
confident when she would have been timid. It has had 
its drawbacks, but they have been far more than coun- 
terbalanced by its advantages. If it has caused a curate 
here and there to affect a mediaeval English accent or 
a feeble-minded bishop to break out into cockade and 
knee breeches, it has, on the other hand, tended to 
give a Church which is the sixth in rank, judged by its 
numbers, a place among the foremost in point of influ- 
ence. The English connection has operated even more 
powerfully indirectly. The higher literature read 
in America is predominantly of English origin, and 
its unconscious background is the English Church. 
Shakespeare takes the Church for granted. Scott 
leaves his every reader in friendly spirit toward her. 
Tennyson and Browning are tinged by her local color. 
English fiction, with whatever motive it be written, 
incidentally makes its readers familiar with her man- 
ners, thoughts, service, and spirit. The theology which 
is read by the clergy of every denomination in America 
is English, as is also their Biblical history and criticism. 
" The Life of Christ " by Farrar and by Edersheim is in 
every hand. Although none of these are written in 
the spirit of an advocate or with the thought of prop- 
agandism, still the fundamental conception of the 
Church of Christ for which Episcopacy stands under- 



442 THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

lies them all and makes itself felt through all. The 
writings of the late Bishop Phillips Brooks have oper- 
ated powerfully in the same direction. They have 
\| passed into the hands of tens of thousands outside the 

Church, and have opened to them the same thought of 
what the religion of Christ essentially is which uncon- 
sciously controlled him and which he imbibed from the 
Church in which he was born. This diffused and inar- 
ticulate predisposition toward the Church has been 
taken advantage of and been forcefully presented by a 
host of more churchly men who have been instant in 
season and out of season to advance her interests and 
extend her visible frontier. The net result has come 
that the Church has steadily grown by natural increase; 
has received many who have been drawn to her by 
various motives; has lost few; has remained hospita- 
ble at heart if not always in manner; and stands to- 
day, in. the general respect and good will of the people, 
for freedom in truth, order in worship, and righteous- 
ness in life. 



1 



INDEX. 



Abolitionists, the Church and, 363. 

Acts of Uniformity and Supremacy, 
8, 26 ; effects of, 11, 26, 32 ; in 
Maryland, 106 ; in Scotland, 155. 

Adams, John, on the Establishment, 
185 ; on the Episcopate, 251. 

Advancement Society, 293. 

Alabama, 328 ; secession of, 369, 371, 
375, 377. 

America, condition of, in 1600, 5 et 
seq.; in 1700, 86 et seq., 95, 98; in 
1800, 277 ; modern, 292. 

American Church, 130; effects of 
revivalism upon, 144 ; need of 
an Episcopate, 173-189 ; three 
motives of reconstruction, 217 ; 
efforts toward organization, 220 
et seq., 238; structural develop- 
ment, 264. 

Americanism, 121, 335. 

Amusements, 159. 

Anabaptists, 39, 72. 

Andros, Gov., 44 ; in New York, 63 ; 
opposition to William and Mary 
College, 115. 

Anglo-Catholics, 337, 339. 

Anne, Queen, 31, 125, 148. 

Antrim evictions, 156. 

Architecture, 199, 329. 

Arkansas, 359, 369, 371, 376. 

Articles, the Thirty-nine, 274, 331. 

Asbury, Mr., 290, 313. 

Assembly, Colonial, acts of, 21, 23, 
84; established the Church in 
New Y.ork, 64 ; hostile legisla- 
tion of, 110, 122 ; proposition to, 
117. 



Atkinson, Bishop, 370, 377. 
"Awakening, the Great," 136 et 

seq., 170; and the Evangelical 

movement, 318. 

Bacon, Ephraim, 321. 

Baltimore, Lord, 48, 49, 51. 

Baptists, relations with the Indians, 
20 ; among the Puritans, 35, 41 ; 
in New York, 63 ; doctrine of the 
"Inner Light," 72; numbers in 
Maryland in 1703, 105 ; in North 
Carolina, 124 ; on the Memorial 
of 1853, 354; attitude toward 
slave question, 360. 

Bass, Dr., 259. 

Bedell, Dr., 318. 

Benade, Bishop, 341. 

Berkeley, Dean, 133. 

Binney, Horace, 378. 

Bishop, see Episcopate ; Methodist, 
171. 

Bishop of London, 23, 47, 66, 92, 96, 
117, 194 ; Compton, 97, 175, 177 
poVers of, 109, 115, 121, 175, 192 
Gibson, 110; Lowth, 170, 229 
Tenison, 177, 179. 

Blair, Commissary, 89 ; in Virginia, 
112; efforts for William and 
" Mary College, 113 ; see Commis- 
saries. 

Blaxton, AVilliam, 39. 

Bohler, Peter, 152 ; influence on 
Wesley, 164. 

Book Annexed, 407. 

Boston, parish organized, 43 ; see 
Massachusetts. 



444 



INDEX. 



I 



Boucher, Dr., 111. 

Bowman, Dr., 353. 

Boyd, 318. 

Bray, Commissary, 89, 90, 96, 111; 
visit to America, 97 ; his memo- 
rial, 98 ; in Maryland, 105 ; see 
Commissaries. 

Breck, 323. 

Bristed, 318. 

Bristol College, 327. 

Brown Brothers, the, 38. 

Bull, 318. 

Burgess, Bishop, 350, 352. 

Burlington, N. J., 179, 191 ; conven- 
tion in 1705, 178. 

Butler, Gen., as a canonist, 372. 

California, 357, 358. 

Calvert, Lord Baltimore, 48, 49, 51. 

Calvinism, in Scotland, 153 ; and the 
Evangelicals, 316 ; in the Church, 
330. 

Carolinas, the, 82 ; the Church there, 
84, 124, 125, 293; conditions in 
1820, 296; Bishop Kavenscroft, 
320 ; secession, 329. 

Catholic, 332, 338 ; renaissance, 324 ; 
nature of the Church, 342, 350. 

Centralization, 324 et seq. , 329, 338, 366. 

Chandler, Dr., 184, 186, 227. 

Charles I., 31; loyalty to, in Vir- 
ginia, 112 ; in Scotland, 233. 

Charleston, 83, 84. 

Charter withdrawn from Massachu- 
setts, 42 ; from Maryland, 55. 

Chase, Bishop, 293, 301, 305, 318. 

Cheney, Rev. Charles E., 397. 

Christ Church, Philadelphia, 81 ; 
Savannah, 162. 

Church, the, effect of Act of Uni- 
formity upon, 11, 12, 26, 32; in 
Raleigh's colony, 14, 112; in 
Gorges' colony, 15, 94 ; first in 
America, 17 ; relations with In- 
dians, 20 ; lack of sympathy from 
colonists, 20 ; legislation in re- 
gard to, 21, 94, 106, 110; relaxa- 



tion of laws and manners, 24, 
136; condition in 1700, 25, 57, 
86, 95, 98 ; relation to State, see 
Church and State ; temper of, 32, 
172; in New England, 35 et seq., 
94, .127, 185 ; in Maryland, 54, 58, 
105 ; in New York, 63, 93, 284 ; 
attitude of Quakers toward, 74, 
78; in Pennsylvania, 80, 102; in 
the Carolinas, 83, 124 ; conflict 
with vestries, 92, 93; S. P. G., 
96, 98, 103 ; buildings, 102 ; work 
of Keith and Talbot, 101, 103; 
the Commissaries, 105, 112 ; at- 
tempt to reform manners, 107, 
117 ; apathy to educational in- 
terests, 113, 114 ; devoted men 
in, 120, 342 ; in Connecticut, 132, 
289 ; attitude toward revivalism, 
140, 142, 145 ; theory of religion, 
138, 144 ; secret of growth, 146, 
172 ; influence of the Scotch, 157, 
159 ; mistaken . policy, 12, 158, 
170; relation to Methodism, 160 
et seq., 169, 172, 290 ; theories of, 
see Theories ; condition before 
the Revolution, 190 ; growth of, 
191, 193, 342, 354 ; services, 200 ; 
Tories in, 204 ; attitude toward 
the Revolution, 205 et seq.; after 
the Revolution, 217, 219; three 
motives in reorganization of, 217; 
property, 219, 221, 222 ; organiz- 
ing and naming, 220, 223 ; the 
federal idea in, see Federal; 
fundamental principles (1784), 
239 ; Constitution of, 240 et seq.; 
structural development of, 264, 
310; State autonomy, 273, 297, 
300, 309; French influence, 280; 
condition in the South, 286; in 
1820, 295, 297, 311 ; among the 
pioneers, 298 ; national quality 
of, see National ; propagandism, 
309, 310, 326; "High" and 
"Low," 315, 316, 320; move- 
ment West, 322, 357 : two ideals 



INDEX. 



445 



of, 323 ; centralization, 324, 356 ; 
the Church idea, 326, 328, 329, 
343, 381 ; as a sect, 342, 343, 348 ; 
Unit}', 421, see Unity ; attitude 
toward slaver}-, 361 ; in the Con- 
federacy, 369 ; reunited, 374, 379 ; 
new problems, 379, 380 ; influ- 
ence, 428 ; and doctrine, 438. 

Church and State ; churchman's 
theory of, 27 ; Puritan theory of, 
26, 27, 31; Romanist theory of, 
26, 27; Pilgrims' theory of, 28; 
English theory of, 30, 93 ; alli- 
ance between, 31, 42, 93, 110, 
126, 160, 180, 209; conflict be- 
tween, 109, 117, 121, 123, 185, 189; 
at the Revolution, 205 et seq.; 
after the Revolution, 215 ; at the 
Civil War, 365, 366, 368. 

Civil War, effects of, 379, 380. 

Claggett, Dr., 281, 286. 

Clayton, Rev. Thomas, 81. 

Clergy, character of, 18, 21, 56, 57, 
111, 113, 115, 120, 342 ; dress of, 

87, 199, 285, 328 ; social status of, 

88, 91 ; manners of, 89, 90, 107 ; 
lack. of equipment, 96, 113; con- 
flict with the people, 109, 121 ; 
discipline of, 115, 117, 119 ; sup- 
port of, see Support ; numbers of, 
195 ; not called priests, 201 ; posi- 
tion at the Revolution, 205 ; suf- 
ferings of, 209 ; in 1800, 311. 

Clerk, the, 87, 200. 

Cobbs, Bishop, 370. 

Coke, Dr., 290. 

Colonial, legislation, see Assembly 
and Legislation ; Church the- 
ology, 432. 

Colonies, Raleigh's, 14 ; Gorges', 
15, 36, 94; Virginia, 16, 112; 
Massachusetts, 29 ; Maryland, 49; 
New York, 59 ; Swedes on the 
Delaware, 69 ; Friends in New 
Jersey, 75; Penn's, 79; South 
Carolina, 83 ; Georgia, 124, 162 ; 
legal status of, 184. 



Commissaries, in Maryland, 105 ; in 
Virginia, 112 ; see Bray and Blair ; 
in Northern colonies, 126. 

Commonwealth and the Church, 24, 
176 ; in Virginia, 112. 

Confederate Church, 369 et seq. 

Confirmation, 200, 282. 

Congregationalists, on the Memo- 
rial (1853), 354. 

Connecticut, the Church in, 36, 132, 
191; first convention, 225; eccle- 
siasticism, 238, 240, 254 ; in 1812, 
289. 

Constitution, of Church, 242, 258; 
discussion of, 261 ; change in the 
Spirit of, 309, 310, 324. 

Convention in 1783, 221 ; Constitu- 
tional (1785), 240; in 1786, 252; 
in 1789, 259 ; in 1792, 299 ; powers 
of, 265, 268, 272, 309, 367 ; in 1812, 
288 ; in 1844, 339 ; in 1853, 358 ; in 
1862, 367 ; Confederate, 369, 370 ; 
1865, 377; see General Convention. 

Conversion, J. Edwards's theory of, 
138, 313 ; Wesley's, 165, 313 ; the 
principle, 169, 172, 313. 

Convocation, 107, 265. 

Corporation for the relief of widows 
and children of clergy, 201, 238. 

Coxe, Dr.. 326, 353. 

Craik, Dr., 353. 

Creed, the Athanasian, 246, 249, 263; 
Nicene, 246, 253, 256; Apostles', 
247, 253. 

Croswell, Dr., 326. 

Cummins, Bishop, 381, 400. 

Cutler, President of Yale, 127. 

Dare, Virginia, 14. 

Dashiell, Daniel, 286. 

Davis, Bishop, 370. 

Declaration, concerning baptismal 

regeneration, 397 ; concerning 

ritual, 388. 
Deism, 166, 195, 248. 
De Koven, Rev. Dr. James, 392. 
De Lancev, 343. 



446 



INDEX. 



\ 



Delaware, 69 ; in 1820, 296. 

Diaconate, the, revival of, 349, 351, 
352, 356. 

Diocesan autonomy, 274, 351 ; sub- 
division, 324. 

Discipline, 109; decline of, 117; dif- 
ficulties of, 176 ; Bishop's powers 
of, 266, 267 ; of laity, 270 ; trial of 
Bishops, 325. 

Dissenters, 106, 125, 133 ; inclination 
toward the Church, 102, 178. 

Doane, Bishop, 326, 350, 351. 

Doddridge, Kev. Joseph, 298, 299. 

Dogma, 153; changes in Prayer-Book, 
248 ; anti-dogmatic spirit, 248, 
332 ; new methods and, 380. 

Duche, Dr., 286. 

Dutch, the, 59 el seq.; ecclesiastical 
position, 61 ; dealings with Puri- 
tans, 61 ; toleration, 62 ; atti- 
tude toward the Church, 63, 102, 
193. 

Eastern Church, 411. 

Ecclesiasticism in New England, 
238, 254, 255; and the federal 
idea, 240 ; increasing, 325 ; and 
the Oxford movement, 340. 

Education, 96, 97, 198, 294 ; opposi- 
tion to, in Virginia, 114; Dean 
Berkeley and, 133 ; academies and 
seminaries, 293; Bishop Otey in 
Mississippi, 309 ; Bishop Chase in 
Ohio, 305. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 136 ; theory of 
conversion, 138 ; influence of, on 
American Church, 138, 329; rela- 
tion to Wesley, 170. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 48. 

Elliott, Bishop, 365, 366, 369, 374. 

Emigration to America, occasions of, 
8, 23 ; conditions for, 18; from 
Germany, 147 ; Scotch-Irish, 156 ; 
to West and South, 301, 357. 

Endicott, John, 37. 

England, condition of, in 1600, 9; 
at the Reformation, 153 ; in 1750, 



165 ; feeling toward American 
Church, 229 ; in 1825, 330. 

English, theory of the Church, 30; 
ignorance of American affairs, 
180; Church ceased to exist in 
America, 209, 217. 

Episcopacy, 128, 336; and Presby- 
terianism, 154; and Methodism, 
170. 

Episcopate, the, 173, 250, 348 ; plans 
for American, 65, 110, 176, 178, 
179 ; need of, 108, 116, 176, 194 ; 
reasons of failure, 180; current 
conception of, 181 ; opposition 
to, 182, 229 ; impossible till after 
the Revolution, 187; "Indepen- 
dent," 187; Dr. Seabury and the 
Connecticut plan, 227 ; resort to 
Scotland, 231; in the Middle 
States, 250 ; the two lines of, 254; 
English succession, 260, 281. 

Establishment, the, in Massachusetts 
and New York by English law, 
42, 93, 94, 185 ; in Maryland, 55 ; 
unpopular, 57, 186, 217 ; by the 
Assembly, 64, 106 ; in South Caro- 
lina, 84, 125. 

" Evangelical Episcopal Church," 
287. 

Evangelicals, the, 145, 311 ; com- 
pared with Methodists, 312 ; dif- 
ferentiate of, 313 ; theory of 
Church, 315; function of, 312, 
316 ; cause of decline of, 316 ; in 
1853, 317 ; leaders of, 318; Knowl- 
edge Society, 320, 338. 

Evans, Evan, 95. 

Evans, H. D., 338. 

Evolution, doctrine of, 380. 

Fackler, St. M., 358. 

Federal Idea, the, 236, 264, 273, 297, 
300, 306, 356, 366 ; and the eccle- 
siastical idea, 240, 281 ; revolu- 
tionary character of, 265 ; new 
departure, 309, 310, 324. 

Fletcher, Gov., 64. 



INDEX. 



447 



Flushing Institute, 327. 

Fourth of July Office, 247, 263. 

Fox, George, 71, 75. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 131, 189, 205 ; 

influence of, 196. 
Freeman, Bishop, 353. 
Freeman, of King's Chapel, 248. 
French influence, 280, 288. 

General Convention, powers of, 
270, 271, 272, 309, 367; in 1844, 
339; memorial to (1853), 344 et 
seq.; spirit of, 356; and the Con- 
federates, 375. 

Georgia, 124; Wesley in, 162; seces- 
sion, 369. 

Germans, 147 ; religious and social 
condition, 149 ; relations with the 
Church, 151. 

Gibson, Bishop, of London. 110. 

Gorges' Colony, 15, 36, 94. 

"Great Awakening," the, 136,159, 
329. 

Greek Church in Alaska, 358. 

Green, Bishop, 369. 

Gregg, Bishop, 370. 

Griffith, Dr., 253, 258, 281. 

Griswold, Bishop, 293, 318, 326. 

Hawks, 326. 

Hayti, 381. 

Henry, Patrick, 120, 123, 287. 

Hervey, 313. 

Higginson, Rev. Francis, 29. 

High Churchmen, 316, 319, 321. 

Hobart, Bishop, 284, 286, 293, 294, 
318 ; churchmanship of, 319, 328, 
335. 

" Holy Club," the, 161, 164, 312. 

Hook, Dean, 334, 336. 

Hopkins, Bishop, 318, 326, 368, 374, 
375, 387. 

House of Bishops, see Episcopate. 

Huguenots, in New York, 62, 63 ; in 
Maryland, 105 ; in South Caro- 
lina, 125. 

Hunt, Pvev. Robert, 16, 18, 113. 



Huntington, Rev. Dr. Wm. R., 406. 
Hymns, 200, 272. 

Immigration, of Germans, 147; 
checked, 151; of Scotch-Irish, 156. 

Independents, in England, 26; ready 
to conform, 178. 

" Independent Episcopal Church," 
187, 224. 

Indians, the, character of, 6; at- 
tempts to convert, 7, 19, 113, 192, 
293 ; first convert, 14 ; relations 
with churchmen, 20 ; with Penn, 
77 ; with the Welsh, 82. 

Individualism, 329. 

Infidelity, 280, 288, 334. 

Ingham, 313. 

Inglis, Bishop, 208, 227. 

"Inner Light," doctrine of , 72, 76, 
79. 

Italian Church reform, 412. 

Ives, Bishop, 340. 

James I., 30, 48, 154. 
Jarratt, Devereux, 288. 
Jarvis, Dr., 256. 
Jefferson, 280, 281. 
Jesuits, missionaries, 5, 6 ; in Mary- 
land, 50, 52. 
Jews, the, in New York, 62. 
Jones, Morgan, 82. 
Jubilee College, 305. 

Keble, 326, 331. 

Keith, George, Quaker, 79 ; mission- 
ary of S. P. G., 101, 103, 177. 

Kemp, Bishop, 286. 

Kemper, Bishop, 343, 351. 

Kentucky, 298, 301, 306 ; Church or- 
ganized, 307. 

Kenyon College, 305. 

Kerfoot, Dr., 378, 379. 

King's Chapel, 46 ; Unitarianism of, 
248. 

Kip, Bishop, 338, 358. 

Lake, Arthur, Rt. Rev., 29. 



448 



INDEX. 



I 



Laws, see Legislation. 

Lay, Bishop, 377. 

Laymen in Church councils, 242, 

243, 255, 258, 261, 265, 266. 
Learning, Jer., 227. 

Lee, 120^ 287. 

Legal status of the colonies, 184 ; 
of the Church, 123, 185. 

Legislation, concerning religion, in 
Virginia, 21; Puritan, 22, 34; 
spirit of, 22 ; English laws and 
colonial, 94 ; in Maryland, 106 ; 
hostile to the Church, 110, 122. 

Liberalism, 332. 

Lincoln, President, 363, 369, 373. 

Liquor, production of, 279 ; ques- 
tion, 326, 363. 

Liturgy, control of, 271 ; compulsory 
use of, 348, 351, 352, 354 ; revision, 

244, 261, 357, 381; Confederate, 
371 ; science of, 406. 

Lockwood, Henry, 321. 

Louisiana (New Orleans), 293, 302 ; 
secession, 369. 

Low Churchmen, 284, 315, 320, 322. 

Lutherans, in New York, 62 ; Swed- 
ish, 69, 352 ; attitude toward the 
Church, 102, 152, 178, 194; in 
Maryland, 105 ; in Pennsylvania, 
150. 

Madison, Bishop, 281, 290. 

Madi&on, President, 205. 

Manteo, 14. 

Marriages, performed only by clergy, 
92, 107. 

Marshall, Samuel, 84. 

Martyn, Henry, 321. 

Maryland, colonized, 49 ; Protestant 
revolution, 53; Yeo's account of, 
54 : charter revoked, 55 ; in 1700, 
57, 105 ; the Establishment, 106 ; 
reorganizing the Church, 220, 221 ; 
in 1820, 296. 

Massachusetts, 36, 41, 42, 94, 185. 

Mcllvaine, Bishop, 318, 338, 368. 

Meade, Bishop, 288, 293, 326, 328; 



Evangelical, 318; on the Memorial 
of 1853, 352; on slavery, 364; 
secession, 365, 369, 370. 

Meeting-houses, joint use of, 44. 

Memorial, Dr. Bray's, 98 ; of 1853, 
344; report of committee upon, 
354 ; fatal choice, 355 ; task taken 
up, 381. 

Mennonites, 72, 76, 150. 

Methodists, 160 ; lost to the Church, 
12, 171, 291 ; in Georgia, 124 ; re- 
lation to the Church, 160, 169 
170 ; origin, 161 ; purpose, 168 
come to America, 170 ; bishops 
171 ; after the Kevolution, 288 
Dr. Coke's plan of union, 290 
among the pioneers, 298, 307 
Evangelicals and, 312, 318 ; eccle- 
siastical empire, 329 ; on the Me- 
morial of 1853, 354 ; on slavery, 
360. 

Mexico, Church in, 413. 

Mexican commission, 417. 

Miller, Chaplain, 65, 177. 

Minnesota, 323, 359. 

Missions, to Indians, 1, 7, 19 ; of the 
S. P. G., 99 ; new departure, 300, 
309 ; foreign, 321 ; general, 327. 

Mississippi, 308, 328 ; secession, 369, 
375. 

Missouri, 327. 

Moore, Bishop, 284, 318, 328. 

Moravians, 20, 152, 164 ; and the 
Church, 341, 353. 

Moravian Orders, 420. 

Morton, John, 36. 

Muhlenbergs, the, 151, 206, 326, 327, 
343, 355, 357. 

Name of the Church, 220. 

National Church, 11, 297, 299, 300, 
309, 310, 318, 321. 

New England, first colony in, 29; 
Puritans, 26 et seq.; planting the 
Church in, 35; "converts," 127, 
256; condition just before the 
Revolution, 190 ; reorganization, 



INDEX. 



449 



223 ; plan for the Episcopate, 223 ; 
ecclesiasticism of, 238, 240 ; after 
the Revolution, 289; iu 1820, 295. 

New Jersey, 75 ; (Burlington), 178, 
179, 191 ; in 1820, 296. 

Newman, 331 ; Lis purpose, 332; the 
outcome, 334, 337, 340. 

Newton, John, 313. 

New York, settled, 59 ; coming of 
English Church to, 63 ; Trinity 
Parish, 67, 95; in 1700,95; just 
before the Revolution, 191 ; party 
strife, 284 ; in 1820, 295. 

Nicholson, Gov., 89, 115, 116, 179. 

Nitschman, Bishop, 152. 

Nonjurors, 232, 256. 

North Carolina, see Carolinas. 

Oglethorpe's settlement, 124, 161. 

Ohio, condition in 1820, 296, 298, 301 ; 
Phil. Chase, 302, 306, 323 ; Church 
organized, 303. 

Old South Meeting-House, 44. 

Old Swedes Churches, 70. 

Onderdonk, Bishop, 326, 327. 

Orders, the question of, 128, 130, 174, 
345, 349, 351 ; Scotch, 233 ; rela- 
tion of the three, 266. 

Ordination, difficulties of, 176; power 
of selection for, 268. 

Oregon, 358. 

Organization .of the Church, two 
theories of, 173 ; iu Maryland, 
220; in Virginia, 222; in New 
England, 223 ; political obstacles, 
226 ; in the Middle States, 238 ; 
fundamental principles, 239. 

Otey, Bishop, 307, 320, 343, 350, 365, 
370. 

Oxford Movement, the, 329, 333 et 
seq.; results, 334, 340, 841. 

Paca, Gov., 221. 
Paine, Tom, 195, 280. 
Parker, Dr., 256, 258, 259, 293. 
"Parsons' Cause," the, 121. 
Partisan Church papers, 396. 



Penn, William, 76, 7?. 

Pennsylvania, colonized, 77 ; first 
Church, 80; Christ Church, 81; 
in 1700, 95; Talbot's report, 102; 
University of, 131, 195 ; German 
immigration, 148 ; " Dutch," 149 ; 
in 1820, 296. 

Philadelphia, 69, 70, 79, 80, 81, 156 ; 
see Pennsylvania, 

Pilgrims, the, 28. 

Pocahontas, 19. 

Polk, Bishop, 343,376; on the Me- 
morial of 1853, 352 ; on slavery, 
366, 369, 370. 

Porteus, Bishop, 317. 

Potter, Bishop Alonzo, 343, 350, 351, 
357. 

Prayer-Book, imposed by law, 10 ; 
distasteful to Puritans, 37, 38, 94 ; 
scarcity of, 87 ; English book in 
use, 244 ; revision of, 244, 261, 262, 
270, 311, 402; commission, 407. 

Presbyterians, lost to the Church, 
12 ; with the Indians, 20 ; Dutch, 
61, 62 ; in New York, 65 ; in the 
Carolinas, 84, 124 ; in Maryland, 
110, 111 ; and revivalism, 140 ; in 
Scotland, 153 ; in America, 15G ; 
attitude toward the Church, 157 ; 
influence, 159 ; after the Revolu- 
tion, 281 ; among the pioneers, 
299; strife, 329 ; on the Memorial, 
353 ; on slavery, 360. 

Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 
Society for, 97. 

Propagation of the Gospel, Society 
for, 96 ; see Society. 

Property, the Church's, 219, 221, 287, 
295. 

"Proposed Book," the, 245; see 
Prayer-Book. 

" Protestant Catholics," 57. 

Protestant Episcopal Church, 220, 
341, 342, 350. 

Protestantism, 174, 332. 

Provoost, Bishop, 207, 249, 253, 258, 
284, 285. 



450 



INDEX. 



I 



Puritans, 26, 136 ; lost to the Church, 
12 ; attitude toward the Church, 
16, 29, 36, 39, 94, 128, 132, 183 ; 
laws, 22, 34; theory, 31 ; temper, 
32 ; and the Prayer-Book, 37, 38 ; 
joint use of meeting houses, 44 ; 
quarrel with, ended, 47 ; and the 
Dutch, 61, 62 ; influence upon the 
ministerial office, 91 ; relaxation 
of religious life, 136 ; and revi- 
valism, 142, 143. 

Quadrilateral, the, 423. 

Quakers, lost to the Church, 12 ; at- 
titude toward the Church, 23, 78, 
102, 103, 193 ; with the Puritans, 
35, 41; with the Dutch, 62; George 
Pox and the " Inner Light," 72; 
in New Jersey, 75 ; William Penn, 
76 ; George Keith, 79 ; in Mary- 
land, 105, 106. 

Randolph, John, 120. 

Eavenscroft, Bishop, 307, 320, 341. 

Redemptioners, 149, 197. 

Reformed Church, the, 150, 329 ; on 
the Memorial of 1853, 354. 

Reformed Episcopal Church, 355, 
381, 400. 

Revision of the Prayer-Book, see 
Prayer-Book. 

Revolutionary War, 202. 

Richmond, William, 358. 

Riley, Bishop, 414, 419. 

Ritual,, controversy, 382; commis- 
sion, 390. 

Ritualism, 161, 271, 272, 355, 381 ; in 
Georgia, 163 ; and the Memorial, 
355. 

Robinson, Rev. John, 28. 

Roman Catholic Church, 433. 

Romanists, the, 48 et seq.; and Puri- 
tans, 26 ; attitude toward Acts of 
Uniformity and Supremacy, 27 : 
Lord Baltimore, 48 ; religious lib- 
erty among, 50 ; proscribed in 
Maryland, 55 ; decadence, 53, 105, 



339 ; attitude toward the Church, 
110 ; and Anglo-Catholicism, 329 ; 
growth, 339 ; converts and per- 
verts, 340 ; on slavery, 360. 
Rut! edge, Bishop, 370. 

Sacraments, position of, 144, 341. 

Salem (Mass.), 29, 33 ; (N.J.), 75. 

Salmon, 328. 

Saltonstall, Gov., 131. 

Schwenkfelders, 151. 

Scott, Thomas, 313, 317. 

Scott, Th. P., 358. 

Seabury, Samuel, 200, 207, 208, 218, 
237, 249, 257, 290 ; elected bishop, 
227; career, 227; consecration, 
229, 234, 255, 260 ; Toryism, 262 ; 
manner, 289 ; churchmanship, 
319. 

Sect, the Church as a, 342, 343, 353, 
355 ; first American, 160. 

Service, 11, 87, 199, 200 ; for Fourth 
of July, 247, 263. 

Sewell, 81. 

" Siebentagen," the, 151. 

Simeon, 313, 314, 321. 

Sisterhoods, 354. 

Skelton, Francis, 29. 

Slaves, first, 21 ; influence of, 192 ; 
question of, 279 ; division of 
Churches upon, 360; the Church's 
attitude toward, 361 et seq. 

Smith, Bishop of South Carolina, 282. 

Smith, Bishop of Kentucky, 307. 

Smith, Capt. John, 9, 16, 20. 

Smith, Dr., 216, 237; reorganizing 
and naming the Church, 220 ; 
elected bishop, 221 ; character, 
253, 258, 311; revising the Prayer- 
Book, 345. 

Social conditions in America, 198, 
199, 311; 1790 to 1812, 277; French 
influence, 280; modern, 292. 

Society for Propagating the Gospel 
(S. P. G.), 96, 99, 178, 192; archives 
of, 104 ; in South Carolina, 125 ; 
in New England, 224. 



INDEX. 



451 



South Carolina, see Carolinas. 

State autonomy, 273, 297, 300, 306, 
309, 310, 324, 338, 366. 

State, see Church and State. 

State Idea, see Federal Idea. 

Stevens, Bishop, 378. 

St. Philip's, Charleston, 84. 

Stuyvesant, Peter, 62, 70. 

Sunday, observance of, 159. 

Sunday-schools, 294, 320, 351. 

Support of the Church, 21, 57, 121, 
201 ; in Massachusetts, 43 ; in 
New York, 67; in South Carolina^ 
85; in Maryland and Virginia, 92, 
107, 117, 121 ; by S. P. G., 101, 
103 ; in Vermont, 190 ; lotteries, 
201 ; church property after the 
Revolution, 219, 221, 287. 

Supremacy, Act of, 8, 26. 

Surplice, 87, 199, 328. 

Swedes, 69, 70 ; reformed Church, 
341, 351. 

Talbot, John, 101, 103; report from 

Philadelphia, 102, 177. 
Temperance question, 326. 
Tenison, Bishop of London, 177, 179, 

180. 
Tennessee, 301 ; Church organized, 

308; (Memphis), 328. 
Texas, 328, 359; secession, 369. 
Theories, of the Church, Puritans', 

27, 31; Churchmen's, 27, 343; 

Pilgrims', 28 ; English, 30, 93 ; 

two now extant, 173 ; in New 

England, 223; of religion, 138, 

144, 164, 165, 168. 
Thirty-nine Articles, the, 274* 331. 
Toleration, Act of 1688, 32; Roman- 
ist, 50, 51, 52 ; in Maryland, 58 ; 

among the Dutch, 62. 
Tories, 204, 207, 216, 225, 247, 279. 
Tractarians, the, 330 ; object, 333 ; 

results, 334, 338, 340, 341. 
Trinity, the doctrine of, 248, 249. 
Trinity Church, New York, 67, 95. 
"Tunkers," the, 150. 



Tyng, Rev. Dr. S. H., 318. 
Tyng, Rev. Stephen H., Jr., 397. 

Uniformity, Act of, 8, 10; effect of, 
11, 12, 26, 32; in Maryland, 106; 
tendency toward, 271; uncatholic, 
348, 352; "catholic," 352; for- 
saken, 381. 

Unitarian ism, 248. 

Unity, striving for, 257; Dr. Parker's 
scheme, 259 ; secured (in the 
Church), 263; with Methodists, 
290, 291, 292 ; Memorial of 1853, 
346, 350, 353, 357 ; the Church's 
hope, 381. 

Universalism, 317. 

University, of Pennsylvania, 131, 135; 
of the South, 369. 

Upfold, Bishop, 353. 

Uses, variety of, 11. 

" Venerable Society," 96 ; see 
S. P. G. 

Venn, 313. 

VerMehr, Dr., 358. 

Via Media, 335, 340. 

Virginia, 14 ; Commissary Blair in, 
112; loyalty of, 112 ; reorganizing 
the Church, 222 ; condition in 
1800, 287 ; in 1820, 296 ; seminary, 
321. 

Wainwright, Bishop, 338, 350. 

War, the Civil, effects of, 379, 380. 

Warrington, Rev. Thomas, 123. 

Washburn, Dr., 355. 

Washington, George, 120, 203, 287. 

Welsh, the, and Indians, 82; Church 
colony, 120. 

Wesley, 124, 161, 329; in Georgia, 
162 ; among the Moravians, 152, 
164; his conversion, 165; purpose, 
168; organization, 169, 171, 291. 

West, the Church in, 322, 357, 358, 
381. 

White, Bishop, plan for American 
Episcopate, 188 ; confirmation, 



452 



INDEX. 



200, 282 ; patriot, 207 ; after the 
Revolution, 218, 224 ; career, 237, 
290 ; revising the Prayer-Book, 
245 ; elected bishop, 253; striving 
for unity, 258 ; and the English 
succession, 260, 262; death, 320. 

White, Rev. John, 29. 

Whitefield, George, 124, 168, 329; 
character, 141. 

Whittaker, Alexander, 19, 113. 

Whittingham, Bishop, 326, 343, 365. 

Wilberforce, Bishop, 362, 363 n. 



William of Orange, 46, 64, 232. 
William and Mary College, 

value to the Church, 116; 

the Revolution, 288. 
Williams, Bishop, 350, 352. 
Williams, Roger, 40, 62. 
Wilmer, Bishop, 371, 375. 
Wilmington (Del.), 69. 

Yale College, 127, 134. 
Yeo's report of Maryland, 54. 



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clearly and convincingly put." — Boston Transcript. 

THE WORLD AND THE KINGDOM. 

The Paddock Lectures for 1888. i2mo, cloth, 75 cents. 

"' The World and the Kingdom' is a remarkable little volume of addresses by the 
Bishop of Mississippi. Dr. Thompson's vigorous and eloquent book will, it is to be 
hoped, attract many readers outside the limited circle of divinity students. Briefly put, 
these discourses are based on 'development, the law of the Spiritual Kingdom,' and 
the uniformity that governs both natural and spiritual processes. The thesis is not new, 
of course, for much has been written upon it, especially by writers 'concerned about 
the reconciling of religion and science.' But Dr. Thompson's interpretation of man's 
position in the world leads to conclusions altogether different from those arrived at in 
the popular literature to which he refers. Man is not engaged in a mere brutal 
struggle for existence but in a struggle for mastery. In the physical world the envi- 
ronment is accepted, by man it is disdained. He is not content to adapt himself to 
the environment, but in conquering it by continuous development towards more com- 
plex environments forever spurred onward and forever discontent with victory. 
While apparently ' a product of the world like all the rest,' his life is yet a perpetual 
conflict with the forces that produced him. Science and knowledge do nothing to 
allay the Faust fever of his spirit, his irrepressible aspirations, his 'blank misgivings,' 
nor do they explain his post-cognitions of what Marvell calls ' the happy-garden state, 
and that imperial palace whence he came.' These, says Dr. Thompson, are primal 
questions of humanity and not to be charmed into silence by any knowledge of matter 
and its phenomena. You may apply the principle of heredity here and find the key 
to the perplexity. These intimations of another state are reminiscences inherited. 
Almost all peoples have some such faith or tradition, however shadowy, and what is 
common to all must have a common origin. 

" We have but touched upon one or two salient points of the Bishop's argument. 
The full force and significance of his stimulating book will, we are confident, interest 
all sorts and conditions of readers." — Saturday Review. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

2 and 3 Bible House, New York. 



PROF. T. K. CHEYNE'S WORKS. 



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The Origin and Religious Contents of the Psalter, in 

the Light of Old Testament Criticism and the History of 
Religions. With an Introduction and Appendixes. Eight 
Lectures Preached before the University of Oxford in the 
Year 1889. 8vo, cloth, $4.00. 

"The Oriel Professor at Oxford (Dr. Cheyne) is an earnest, conscientious and 
industrious critic. His Bampton Lectures are the outcome of twenty years 1 study and 
research. He asks to be considered not a 'fledgeling,' but a critic of fully adequate 
experience, not a ' Germanizer.' but an honest English worker in Biblical exegesis. He 
settles on the principles of the ' higher criticism ' numerous disputed questions in regard to 
the Book of Psalms."— 2\T. Y. Times. 

The Book of Psalms; or, the Praises of Israel. A new 

Translation, with Commentary. 8vo, cloth, $3.00. 

"We not only welcome this volume by the Canon of Rochester as a delight to scholars, 
but also commend it to all devout laymen and students who, believing the Bible to be the 
Word of God, may yet have to complain of having it expounded, and the Gospel preached, 
in seventeenth century phrase, and with the traditionalist's fear of the dreadful nineteenth 
century knowledge that is so rapidly cracking the rind of authorized opinions." 

— The Critic. 

The Prophecies of Isaiah. A new Translation, with Com- 
mentary and Appendixes. Revised. Two volumes in one. 
8vo, cloth, $4.00. 

"Mr. Cheyne's work is in many respects one of the most noteworthy of our day. . . 
He has been a devout and careful student of Isaiah for some twenty years past." 

—N. Y. Times. 
•'We rejoice that a Commentary which must be marked 'indispensable,' is thus put 
within the reach of a larger number of those who love the great prophet." 

— Andover Review. 
"The qualities of Mr. Cheyne's Commentary would make it a good book in any 
language, or almost in any condition of Biblical learning. It is perspicuous without being 
superficial, and terse without the omission of anything of importance." — Academy. 

Job and Solomon ; or, the Wisdom of the Old Testament. 

8vo, cloth, $2.50. 

"This is certainly one of the most fascinating and delightfully readable works in 
Biblical criticism that has come under our eye for a long time. If Robertson Smith or 
Welhausen had a style like that of Cheyne the rapidly advancing science (or art) of 
Biblical criticism would soon be amazingly popular." — The Critic. 

The Hallowing of Criticism. Nine Sermons on Elijah, 
Preached in Rochester Cathedral. i2mo, cloth, red edge, 

$2.00. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher, 

2 and 3 Bible House, New York. 






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Christ and Modern Unbelief." 

By Rev. RANDOLPH H. McKIM, 0.0. , 

Rector of Epiphany Church, Washington, D. C. 
12mo, in cloth* r>rice, 31.00. 




CONTENTS: 

LECTURE I. The Citadel and its Defence. II. The Theistic 

Foundation. III. The Unique Personality of Christ. IV. 

The Plan and the Teaching of Christ. V. The Work of 

Christ. VI. Miracles. VII. Theories of the Resurrection. 

From RT. REV. THOS. F. GAILOR, D,D., Assistant Bishop of 

Tennessee. 

"At first I said to myself 'Is there any need for another book on 
this subject?' But when I read it I was delighted. You have really 
supplied a felt need and I have recommended the book to my students, 
as a fresh, clear and able presentation in convenient form of the modern 
problem — with very admirable survey of the Christian argument." 

From MR. JAMES L. HOUGH TELING, President of the Council 
of St. Andrew's Brotherhood. 

" I have this moment finished the perusal of your book ' Christ and 
Modern Unbelief.' I write to thank you with all my heart. I thank 
you first in my own behalf. I have been confused alike by the assaults 
of foes and the defences of friends. . . . You have met my difficul- 
ties squarely and have disavowed arguments which have seemed to me 
untenable. I deem your argument conclusive. It is so to me at any 
rate, and I believe the book will be of great use." 

From REV. EDWARD WHITE, M.A., author of " Life in 

Christ." 
" I don't know where I have seen the things requisite to be said in 
the present distress, better put, or in a briefer and more logical form." 

THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

2 & 3 Bible House, oth St. and Fourth Ave., New York. 



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ADBREY L. MOORE'S WRITINGS. 



"With preachers like Phillips Brooks and M. Bersier the late Rev. 
Aubrey L. Moore was not unworthy to take rank, though his strength lay, 
perhaps, in delicacy of spiritual perception rather than in the more ordinary 
and popular forms of pulpit eloquence." — The London Times. 

I. 

Sermons Preached in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. By 

the late Rev. Aubrey L. Moore. 121110, cloth, $1.50. 

Just Out 
II. 

The Message of the Gospf 1. By the late Rev. Aubrey L. 

Moore. i2mo, cloth, 75 cents. 

This volume contains three addresses on the Message of the Gospel ; 
two on Vocation ; and six sermons before the University of Oxford on the 
following topics : " The Veil of Moses," " The God of Philosophy and the 
God of Religion," " The Claim to Authority," " The Power of Christ on 
Moral Life," " The Presence of God in the Christian and the Church," 
4 ' Decision for God." 

" In bulk this is a small book, but like a jewel casket, small itself, its 
contents are of great price." — The Churchman. 

III. 

Some Aspects of Sin : Three Courses of Lent Sermons. 

By the late Rev. Aubrey L. Moore. i2mo, cloth, 
75 cents. 

IV. 

Science and the Faith. Essays of Apologetic Subjects 
With an Introduction. Second Edition. i2mo, cloth, $1.50, 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher, 

2 and 3 Bible House, New York. 



Standard Books of Illustration. 

A DICTIONARY OF SUGGESTIVE THOUGHTS, QUOTATIONS 
AND SELECTED PASSAGES. From the Best Writers, Ancient 
and Modern, for the use of Ministers and others. Compiled and 
Analytically Arranged by Henry Southgate. 447 pages, double 
column, with thorough indexes of authors and subjects, 8vo, cloth, 
$2.00. 

TOOLS FOR TEACHERS. A Collection of Anecdotes, Illustrations, 
Legends, etc., for Teachers of Sunday-schools, Bible Classes and 
Boys' Brigades. Compiled and Arranged by William Moodie. 
Small quarto, 488 pages, cloth, $2.00. 

This book is not intended as a repertory of stories gathered together for their 
own sake. It is meant to be a practical manual and storehouse for teachers of Sunday- 
Schools, Bible Classes and Boys' Brigades, and generally, for all who have to do with 
the moral and religious training of the young. 

THE CYCLOP/EDIA OF NATURE TEACHINGS. Being a Selec- 
tion of Facts, Observations, Suggestions, Illustrations, Examples 
and Illustrative Hints taken from all departments of Inanimate 
Nature, with a copious index of subjects, and also one of Bible 
texts. With an Introduction by Hugh Macmillan, LL.D. 8vo, 
cloth, $2.50. 

CLASSIFIED GEMS OF THOUGHT. From the Great Writers and 
Preachers of all Ages ; in convenient form for use as a Dictionary 
of Ready Reference on Religious Subjects. By Rev. F. B. Proc- 
tor, M.A. With a Preface by Henry Wace, D.D., Principal of 
King's College, London. 816 pages, quarto, cloth, red edges. $3.00. 
One of the most valuable, and the cheapest book of its class in the market. 

THE DICTIONARY OF ANECDOTE, Incident, Illustrative Fact. 
Selected and arranged for the Pulpit and Platform by the Rev. 
Walter Baxendale, with Index and Cross References and 
Texts. Illustrated. 690 pages, thick royal 8vo, cloth, $4.00. 

" This is a great book. He has here gathered fresh, pointed and varied illus- 
trations for the pulpit and platform. We are surprised at the comprehensiveness of 
subjects and the fullness of -i eatment. There are some six hundred topics. The paper 
is good and the type clear. We predict for this book a generous sale." — ZiorCs Herald. 



THOMAS WHITTAKER, Publisher, 
2 and 3 Bible House, - - New York. 



&&£-- 

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TOOLS FOR TEACHERS. 

A Collection of Anecdotes, Illustrations, Legends, etc., for 
Teachers of Sunday-schools, Bible Classes and Boys' 
Brigades. Compiled and Arranged by William Moodie. 
Small quarto, 488 pages, cloth, $2.00. 

"The selections are grouped under thirty-three well-chosen heads, 
and they are made on a basis of 'point and naturalness/ which are rare 
virtues in a book of illustrations. A wide and excellent range of 
sources has been drawn upon in compiling this volume, and a high 
standard has been maintained throughout. You will seek in vain for 
the common-place, but real gems will greet you at every point. Two 
elaborate indexes open up the contents — cne of persons, the other of 
subjects." — Sunday School Times, 

" The best book of its kind that ever came to our hands. From 
beginning to end each single excerpt it contains is one of value to every 
preacher as well as teacher, and will help to point and brighten discourse 
of whatever theme or sort. The collection is not stuffed ; there isn't a 
poor thing in it. The work of classification is admirably done ; and 
the indexical parts are of the most elaborated convenience for men who 
prepare hurriedly to speak," — The Living Church. 

" Many an anxious teacher is at his wits' end to know how he shall 
illustrate to-morrow's lesson so as to interest and impress ; and many a 
speaker desiring to give his auditors something of value to take away 
with them, will here find welcome help."— Public Opinion. 

" To find an apt illustration or anecdote is at times a difficult task. 
This volume is a veritable storehouse of illustrative material of all kinds 
decidedly above the average for naturalness and for usefulness. The 
arrangement of the topics illustrated is sensible, and while old friends 
are present they are in company with a multitude of new faces that 
makes the volume very attractive and valuable for practical uses." 

— JV, Y. Observer, 



*k* Sent postpaid on receipt of price. 

THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

PUBLISHER, 

2 and 3 Bible House, NEW YORK. 






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